The downfall of sexual abuser Harvery Weinstein is coming to the big screen this fall, with a film adaptation of the book detailing journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s investigation into the Hollywood producer.
“She Said” stars Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters who penned the book by the same name, and the 2017 New York Times report that broke the story of Weinstein’s pattern of sexual assault. The story, the film’s synopsis from Universal Pictures says, “helped propel the #MeToo movement, shattered decades of silence around the subject of sexual assault in Hollywood and altered American culture forever.”
Directed by Maria Schrader, the film’s newly released trailer shows the pair hunting down sources, grappling with non-disclosure agreements and dodging threats from Weinstein himself. But attempting to convince women to go on the record with their stories despite the risk proves one of the biggest hurdles.
“The case I made was, ‘I can’t change what happened to you in the past, but together we may be able to help protect other people,’” Mulligan’s Twohey tells Kazan’s Kantor. “The truth, basically.”
The cast includes Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher and Samantha Morton, among others, as supporting characters, and Brad Pitt is listed as a producer.
Pitt, who Gwyneth Paltrow confided in about her own assault at Weinstein’s hands, also heard an account of the producer’s abuse from Pitt’s then-wife Angelina Jolie. Pitt continued to work with Weinstein, who is currently serving 23 years in New York and awaiting trial elsewhere, after learning of the assaults.
“Pitt’s involvement is just one reason to ask: is Hollywood capable of fictionalizing an event so close to its own rotting heart,” AV Club’s Mary Kate Carr writes in a piece announcing the trailer’s release.
“She Said,” the film, is coming to theaters Nov. 18.
