When last we checked in on David O. Russell’s abandoned film Nailed, the long-troubled production had been edited into a finished movie by producer Kia Jam, retitled Politics Of Love, and scheduled for a limited U.K.-only theatrical run. Now comes word that American audiences will get to see the movie after all—only, once again, it won’t be called by that name any more.
Accidental Love is the new title for the movie that Russell walked away from in 2010, due to behind-the-scenes difficulties that seem to involve what producer Lucy Fisher calls “a financier of questionable integrity” (which is a reasonably diplomatic way to refer to a film financier that shut down production 14 separate times). The movie, starring Jessica Biel, James Marsden, and Jake Gyllenhaal, will be released through video-on-demand services on February 10 and receive a theatrical run starting February 20. It is also now credited to director Stephen Greene, which is possibly a pseudonym, but according to IMDb, also possibly the producer of 2005’s Boost Mobile RockCorps Concert, which is the kind of artistic credibility money can’t buy.
The film tells the story of a waitress (Biel) who gets a nail stuck in her head, and travels to Washington, D.C. to advocate for the rights of the “bizarrely injured,” only to end up in bed with a slimy politician (Gyllenhaal). It’s too bad this had to unfold so messily; it looks like this was another fairly promising political satire from the director, fusing the sensibility of Russell’s I Heart Huckabees with the biting social commentary of his earlier work like Three Kings. You can watch the trailer below and decide for yourself if it appears successfully salvaged.
Accidental Love – Trailer from Millennium Ent on Vimeo.