Robert Redford is experiencing a pretty wonderful second career wind at the moment thanks to his very different but both excellent performances in All is Lost and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and this fall will see him back in another leading role, toplining Bill Bryson adaptation A Walk in the Woods with Nick Nolte.
The first trailer for the movie, which just landed online today, paints a relatively detailed picture of the adaptation as a feel-good, low-key dramedy, with Redford and Nolte both taking on roles they’ve played many times before. Of note: Richard Linklater had been circling the project at one point, though that fell apart, leaving Big Miracle director Ken Kwapis to take the reins. What the latter helmer has come up with looks traditional to a fault, though the older age demographic that made both Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movies successful should flock to this one in droves.
Here’s the official synopsis. A Walk in the Woods opens on September 2.
In this new comedy adventure, celebrated travel writer, Bill Bryson (Academy Award winner Robert Redford), instead of retiring to enjoy his loving and beautiful wife (Academy Award winner Emma Thompson), and large and happy family, challenges himself to hike the Appalachian Trail – 2,200 miles of America’s most unspoiled, spectacular and rugged countryside from Georgia to Maine. The peace and tranquility he hopes to find, though, is anything but, once he agrees to being accompanied by the only person he can find willing to join him on the trek – his long lost and former friend Katz (Academy Award nominee Nick Nolte), a down-on-his-luck serial philanderer who, after a lifetime of relying on his charm and wits to keep one step ahead of the law – sees the trip as a way to sneak out of paying some debts and sneak into one last adventure before its too late. The trouble is, the two have a completely different definition of the word, “adventure”. Now they’re about to find out that when you push yourself to the edge, the real fun begins.