Entertainment
Oscars: Paramount’s Contender ‘Selma’ To Debut In Its Entirety Tuesday At AFI Fest
(Atsushi Nishijima)
Pete Hammond, DEADLINE
LOS ANGELES (Deadline.com)—Is AFI Fest 2014 suddenly starting to turn into one very hot film festival? Yes, they had the World Premiere Thursday of J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year and yes, Monday night brings another big World Premiere with the unveiling of Paramount’s The Gambler starring Mark Wahlberg. Now comes word via a Twitter exchange between producer/co-star Oprah Winfrey and director Ava DuVernay that on Tuesday night, instead of just the previously announced 30 minutes of advance footage and a Q&A, the “hot off the presses” complete two hour-plus feature of Selma will be unveiled beginning at 6 PM at the Egyptian Theatre followed by the previously announced Q&A between Winfrey, DuVernay and David Oyelowo.
At Deadline’s Contenders event a week ago Saturday, DuVernay told me in front of a packed house of AMPAS and Guild voters that she had just one week to go before “locking” the film, and in fact was returning to her Avid editing machine right after our interview to complete the task. According to the Twitter conversation Sunday night between DuVernay and Winfrey, it is mission accomplished and the film is ready to be shown in its entirety contrary to what AFI announced last week.
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