‘Nebraska’ Film Gets Awards Season Release Date From Paramount

Nebraska, the upcoming film from director Alexander Payne, has been given a November 22 release date from Paramount, just in time for Awards season, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The website noted on Friday that Nebraska would pair screen veteran Bruce Dern — or as we like to refer to him, “that a**hole that once killed John Wayne — with SNL‘s Will Forte in a black-and-white, father-and-son road trip drama about an old man, who thinks he’s won a multimillion-dollar magazine sweepstakes.

The son (Forte) agrees to escort his dad (Dern) on a journey from Billings, Montana, to Lincoln, Nebraska, to collect the presumably fictional prize.

The film will play limited release, so any future success will have to come through the nomination process. After all, it’s going head-to-head with The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Who do you think’s going to win that little battle?

Of course, that’s not to say the Nebraska film won’t be worth a look. Payne has Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, and most recently, The Descendants, on his director resume at IMDb, and all of those were well-received.

Sideways received the Movie of the Year Award from the American Film Institute in 2005 and also picked up five Oscar nominations, winning the statue for Best Adapted Screenplay, which Payne co-wrote with Jim Taylor.

Seven years later, in a virtual repeat of Sideways, The Descendants captured a second AFI Movie of the Year win, and Alexander Payne was back on the Oscar stage accepting another Adapted Screenplay award with writing partners Jim Rash and Nat Faxon.

He also had the opportunity to work with this guy:

As for Will Forte, he’s got Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and Grown Ups 2 lined up for 2013 and an Untitled Elmore Leonard Project for 2014.

Whatever title that Elmore Leonard (Jackie Brown, Justified were based on his works) project ends up with, it will be based on the novel The Switch about two cons with a penchant for grand theft auto that reconvene upon release from prison for one last score.

Forte will play Louis Gara, previously brought to life on the big screen by Robert De Niro in Jackie Brown, which in turn was based on Leonard’s novel Rum Punch.

Do you want to see Forte in a drama like the Nebraska film, or would you rather he stick to laughs?

[Image via Featureflash / Shutterstock.com]