The past two years, Oscar season has played host to a Bradley Cooper-Jennifer Lawrence collaboration, but the two made another movie together, and it’s finally being shown. Serena, directed by Susanne Bier, is part of the lineup for the BFI London Film Festival, making what appears to be its world premiere, according to The Playlist. The film will make its festival stop before being released on Oct. 24 in the U.K. It still does not have a U.S. date.

Cooper and Lawrence filmed the movie, which takes place in Depression-era North Carolina, back in March 2012 after they completed Silver Linings Playbook but before they re-teamed with David O. Russell for American Hustle. According to a Hollywood Reporter story from last year, the movie was being shopped to buyers and “generating frenzied interest” from the likes of Fox Searchlight and The Weinstein Company because of (yet another) impressive performance from Lawrence. But there have also been lingering questions about the movie’s quality, considering how long it has taken to get out to the public. An insider told THR, however, that Oscar winner Bier is simply “a total perfectionist.”

In the film, based on a 2008 novel by Ron Rash, Cooper plays a timber mogul. Lawrence plays his wife, the title character, who the New Yorker described as a “Depression-era Lady Macbeth.” The London Film Festival’s summary says that “Lawrence in particular is a treat, playing Serena with an evil eye Bette Davis might have envied.”

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Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper’s depression-era drama, Serena, has finally received a release date in the U.K.
The flick, which wrapped up production in 2012, will open in British cinemas on October 24.

Serena, directed by Susanne Bier with a script from Christopher Kyle and Ron Rash, tells the story of newlyweds Serena and George Pemberton as they come to the realization that she cannot bear children. The plot thickens when Serena sets out to kill a woman who had a child with her husband.

Lawrence stars as the title character and Cooper will play her husband. Rhys Ifans, Sean Harris and Sam Reid co-star in the flick.

Stylist shared an unseen still image Wednesday featuring Lawrence riding a horse. While there’s still no word on when the movie will be released in the U.S., the film’s IMDb page says Serena will come out in 2014.

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CAA will start screening Susanne Bier’s Depression-era drama “Serena,” which was shot in early 2012, late this month — with the Weinstein Co. and Fox Searchlight already interested in the project.

Move over, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. Another film starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper is headed to the big screen, and this one is shrouded in secrecy. Sources say CAA will begin quietly screening the Lawrence-Cooper pairing Serena for distributors in late November.

The Depression-era drama, directed by Danish helmer Susanne Bier, has been so long in the making (Lawrence and Cooper shot it in March 2012, right after Silver Linings and just as The Hunger Games was hitting theaters) that many have forgotten it exists. But project insiders say the film, which Bier has just finished editing, is generating frenzied interest from outlets including Fox Searchlight and The Weinstein Co. thanks to another powerful performance by Oscar winner Lawrence.

Still, it took Bier more than 18 months to finish the film, often a sign that a production is troubled.

“Actually, it was just the opposite,” says one insider. “There were no reshoots or anything like that. It was just a real precision edit because the story is about a woman’s descent into madness. And Susanne is a total perfectionist.” Like Lawrence, Bier is a recent Oscar winner (best foreign-language film in 2011 for In a Better World). But she was not the first director to stake a claim to Serena, based on Ron Rash’s 2008 novel about a North Carolina timber baron and his ambitious wife.

Darren Aronofsky originally was attached to direct with Angelina Jolie starring. But Aronofsky and Jolie fell out, Bier boarded and cast then-rising stars Cooper and Lawrence as the ill-fated newlyweds. Todd Wagner, who financed the film through his and Mark Cuban’s 2929 Productions, allowed Bier all the time she needed.

After Silver Linings, “We didn’t want to be the OK version of the Jennifer Lawrence-Bradley Cooper coupling,” says the insider. If the film sells, it could hit the 2014 festival circuit (Cannes and Venice have reached out) ahead of next year’s awards race.

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