The marketing push for Woody Allen’s latest, a period romantic comedy titled Magic in the Moonlight, has been atypically slight in recent weeks, but Sony Pictures Classics is finally kicking its campaign into high gear with the release of dozens of images from the film, in addition to a large synopsis. Allen and company have no real reason to worry about his film’s box office chances, however – with his reputation and a cast including Emma Stone and Colin Firth, Magic in the Moonlight should cast quite a spell in theaters when it opens later this month.
A new set of images from the film, highlighting its stellar cast and period setting, have landed online, and you can check those out below. In addition to Stone and Firth, Magic in the Moonlight features Hamish Linklater, Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver, Erica Leerhsen, Eileen Atkins, Simon McBurney, Antonia Clarke and Jeremy Shamos.
Sony Pictures Classics has also unveiled a long-form synopsis for Magic in the Moonlight, below:
Set in the 1920s on the opulent Riviera in the south of France, Woody Allen’s Magic in the Moonlight is a romantic comedy about a master magician (Colin Firth) trying to expose a psychic medium (Emma Stone) as a fake.
Chinese conjuror Wei Ling Soo is the most celebrated magician of his age, but few know that he is the stage persona of Stanley Crawford (Firth), a grouchy and arrogant Englishman with a sky-high opinion of himself and an aversion to phony spiritualists’ claims that they can perform real magic. Persuaded by his life-long friend, Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney), Stanley goes on a mission to the Côte d’Azur mansion of the Catledge family: mother Grace (Jacki Weaver), son Brice (Hamish Linklater), and daughter Caroline (Erica Leerhsen). He presents himself as a business man named Stanley Taplinger in order to debunk the alluring young clairvoyant Sophie Baker (Stone) who is staying there with her mother (Marcia Gay Harden). Sophie arrived at the Catledge villa at the invitation of Grace, who is convinced that Sophie can help her contact her late husband, and once there, attracted the attention of Brice, who has fallen for her head over heels.
From his very first meeting with Sophie, Stanley dismisses her as an insignificant pip-squeak who he can unmask in no time, scoffing at the family’s gullibility. To his great surprise and discomfort, however, Sophie accomplishes numerous feats of mind-reading and other supernatural deeds that defy all rational explanation, leaving him dumbfounded. Before long, Stanley confesses to his beloved Aunt Vanessa (Eileen Atkins) that he has begun to wonder whether Sophie’s powers could actually be real. If they were to be true, Stanley realizes that anything might be possible, even good, and his entire belief system would come crashing down.
What follows is a series of events that are magical in every sense of the word and send the characters reeling. In the end, the biggest trick Magic in the Moonlight plays is the one that fools us all.
In other Allen-related news, today brings word that Parker Posey has joined Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone in the director’s 2015 film, set in modern-day Rhode Island. Some have speculated that it’s a teacher/student relationship pic, but all we really know at this point is that it will be “contemporary” and focus on ““academics, graduate students, and middle- and working-class folks.”
Magic in the Moonlight opens on July 25th.
