The McConaissance is a slightly silly, but no less effective term to surmise the radical transformation of Matthew McConaughey from rom-com favorite to a bona fide Oscar-winner by the time Dallas Buyers Club rolled around in 2013. During those intervening years, the intensity of McConaughey’s performances in such crowd-pleasing hits as The Wolf of Wall Street along with the inaugural season of True Detective ensured that the actor was never short of tantalizing roles.
The latest of which places him in the grubby shoes of Kenny Wells, a middle-aged nobody from Las Vegas who unearths a literal goldmine somewhere deep in the Indonesian jungle. It’s a remarkable story based loosely on the Bre-X mining scandal, and one that will underpin Stephen Gaghan’s long-awaited character drama, Gold.
Pegged to arrive in late December, today’s reveal trailer showcases McConaughey’s lead stumble upon an eye-watering fortune, one estimated to be worth upwards of $30 billion. What follows is a rags-to-riches story to end all rags-to-riches stories, and the scenes of Kenny Wells indulging in the excess of ludicrous wealth wouldn’t look out of place in The Wolf of Wall Street.
It is, as McConaughey describes, the “epic tale of one man’s pursuit of the American dream.” He’ll be bound for the jungle alongside a geologist (Edagar Ramirez) as they go about finding the legendary treasure. Bryce Dallas Howard, Toby Kebbell, Stacy Keach, and Bruce Greenwood also star.
Matthew McConaughey will plunder the expansive Indonesian jungle for Gold come December 25. The real question is whether both he and director Stephen Gaghan can find a similar treasure(s) when awards season rolls around.
