For better or for ill, we’re living through chemistry.  It is not a new phenomenon, but it is one that has drastically accelerated, and one with dangerous consequences we can’t escape.  Arguably the most dangerous is the field of anti-depressants/anti-anxiety drugs.  These drugs have value, but their effectiveness, and more importantly, their prescription, is always uncertain.  We’re flawed individuals who are asking for psychological help from other flawed people.  Steven Soderbergh‘s Side Effects spends its first-half exploring this fascinating and complicated issue, but in its second-half, the film ceases to explore the mind, and becomes a mind-numbingly idiotic thriller.

Open Road has released new images from Steven Soderbergh‘s Side Effects.  Rooney Mara stars as a troubled young woman who develops a dangerous love triangle between her doctor (Jude Law) and her newly paroled husband (Channing Tatum).  The trailer makes the film look like an intense psychosexual thriller but done with the unique twist Soderbergh brings to his movies.

Hit the jump to check out the images.  The film also stars Catherine Zeta-Jones.  Side Effects opens February 8, 2013.

Open Road has staked out a release date for director Steven Soderbergh’s now-filming “psychopharmacological thriller” Bitter Pill.  Per Deadline, the film will open on February 8th, 2013.  Currently, the only other pic slated for that pre-Valentine’s Day date is the Nicholas Sparks adaptation Safe Haven.  Bitter Pill stars Rooney Mara as a troubled young woman who develops a dangerous love triangle with her doctor (Jude Law) and her recently-paroled husband (Channing Tatum).

We recently got a look at Mara’s very un-Dragon Tattoo-like look for the film by way of some set photos, and Soderbergh currently has Bitter Pill tee’d up to be his penultimate film before he takes a hiatus from filmmaking.  He plans on filming the Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon this summer, though that film is being made for HBO so Bitter Pill could very well be Soderbergh’s final theatrical release.  His next film, Magic Mike, opens this summer.

Last week, we reported that Steven Sodebergh‘s psychopharmacology thriller Side Effects might lose lead actress Blake Lively because financier Annapurna Pictures didn’t like her in the role.  Actresses rumored to replace Lively included Rooney Mara, Michelle Williams, Emily Blunt, and Imogen Poots.  Today, Deadline reports that Mara will play the role of “a troubled young woman who develops a dangerous love triangle between her doctor (Law) and her newly paroled husband (Tatum).”  The film also stars Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Filming on Side Effects is set to begin in April.  The only other role she’s taken since her breakthrough (and now Oscar-nominated) performance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is in Terrence Malick’s Lawless co-starring Ryan Gosling.  The Girl Who Played with Fire is slowly moving through the pipeline, but it won’t start shooting until the end of 2012/beginning of 2013 at the earliest.

Before tonight, we knew a few things about the “psychopharmacology thriller” that Steven Soderbergh and his Contagion writer Scott Z. Burns are developing:

• The title is either The Side Effects or The Bitter Pill.
• Blake Lively, Jude Law, and Channing Tatum form the three corners of the love triangle at the center of the tense plot.
• Annapurna is financing.  Open Road is distributing.

A lot has changed.  First the addition: Catherine Zeta-Jones joined the cast.  Now the subtraction: the latest reports omit the article, referring to the project as just Side Effects.  More notably, Annapurna has pulled out of the project, which puts the involvement of the aforementioned cast in jeopardy.  More after the jump:

With director Steven Soderbergh’s spy-action pic Haywire opening tomorrow, I recently got to speak with most of the cast about making the movie.  Starring MMA fighter Gina Carano as a burned spy who takes revenge against her handlers, Haywire also stars Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Michael Angarano, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, and Bill Paxton.  I’ve seen Haywire twice now and it’s fantastic.  On top of Carano’s star-making performance, the action scenes are some of the best I’ve seen in years.   It’s absolutely something you should see in a theater.

During the press junket I got to speak to Channing Tatum twice.  The first time we just talked about Haywire. However, the second time we covered a ton of other topics like what the last year has been like for him, his relationship with Soderbergh, how Magic Mike came together and it’s rating, what it was like working with Matthew McConaughey, and what happened to The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. In addition, Tatum revealed he has a small part in Soderbergh’s next picture, The Bitter Pill (which might now be called The Side Effects), and we ended talking about Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher - which he might star in with Steve Carell. It’s a crazy sounding movie.  Hit the jump to watch.

In Novemeber, we reported that Steven Soderbergh had left the adaptation of the 1960s spy TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and turned his attention to The Bitter Pill with Scott Z. Burns (The Informant) writing the screenplay.  The Playlist now reports that the film—now titled The Side Effects—has locked down financing and cast Blake Lively, Jude Law, and Channing Tatum in the lead roles.  Lively will play, “Emily Hawkins, a woman who turns to prescription meds to cope with the anxiety of the upcoming release from prison of her husband.”  Tatum will play the husband and Jude Law will play Hawkins’ new psychiatrist.  This will be Lively’s first film with Soderbergh, but it will be Tatum’s third collaboration with the director (Haywire and Magic Mike) and Law’s second (Contagion).

Hit the jump for more.