Winter Passing, a new film featuring direction and a screenplay by playwright Adam Rapp, will star married actors Ed Harris and Amy Madigan. The film, which features a character based loosely on Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger, will hit theaters on February 17th, 2006.
Also starring in Winter Passing will be Zooey Deschanel (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Elf), Amelia Warner (Quills, the upcoming Aeon Flux) and Will Ferrell ("Saturday Night Live," Bewitched, the upcoming The Producers).
According to press notes, the film recounts how "Struggling twenty-something actress Reese Holden (Zooey Deschanel) has
been promised $100,000 for publication of love letters written by her
legendary, but reclusive father, novelist Don Holden (Ed Harris), to
his equally revered late wife, also an acclaimed writer and Reese's
mother. In search of these letters, Reese treks from New York City back
home to Michigan, where she finds her father in flagrant disregard of
his own health and living with two younger housemates: one, a practical
former grad student, Shelly (Amelia Warner) and the other, a would-be
musician, Corbit (Will Ferrell). Though no angel herself, Reese does
not approve of this ad-hoc 'family.' Little by little, she comes to
appreciate her unlikely new siblings, and as secrets are revealed,
Reese comes to terms with her father, their shared past and hopeful
future."
Harris, who has received Academy
Award nominations for The Hours, Pollock, The Truman Show and Apollo 13, recently made his European stage debut in the play Wrecks
at the Everyman Palace Theater in Cork, Ireland. He has been seen on Broadway in Taking Sides and Precious Sons (for which he received a Tony nomination). Madigan's credits
include such films as Field of Dreams, Twice in a Lifetime (for
which she received an Academy Award nomination), and the HBO series
"Carnivale." She made her Broadway debut
as Stella in the 1992 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. The actors, who will appear in the benefit musical Afternoon Tea for the INTAR Theatre on December 11th, have appeared in four other films together.Rapp, who recently won a Jefferson Award for his play Red Light Winter, has also penned Faster, Nocturne, Trueblinka and Stone Cold Dead, among others. Winter Passage will be produced by Bob Yari, Mark Gordon, Laura Bickford, Jennifer Dana and David Koplan.