First Trailer and Poster for Lee Daniels’ THE PAPERBOY Starring Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, and Matthew McConaughey

The first trailer for Precious director Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy has been released, and it’s pretty out there.  The film is an adaptation of the Pete Dexter novel and stars Matthew McConaughey and Zac Efron as two brothers who team-up to investigate the potential wrongful conviction of a death-row inmate played by John Cusack.  The trailer’s pretty muddled, and it’s tough to make out just exactly what this movie is.  Efron appears to be fixated on a rather free-spirited woman played by Nicole Kidman, while Cusack seems to be playing some sort of victim/villain.  The pic was greeted with a less than enthusiastic response when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and while this trailer doesn’t inspire much evidence to the contrary I’m still interested to see the talented ensemble cast work together.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer and check out the poster.  The Paperboy opens on October 5th.

Click over to Yahoo! to watch in HD.

Here’s the synopsis for The Paperboy:

From Oscar® nominated director Lee Daniels (PRECIOUS) comes a provocative, sexually-charged tale of desire, ambition, prejudice and crime set in the 1960s swamplands of South Florida. Starring Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, David Oyelowo, Macy Gray, John Cusack and Academy Award® winner Nicole Kidman, THE PAPERBOY dips into the gritty human underside of a murder investigation, as a compelling cast of characters confront obsession, deception and their own dark, dark demons on the muddy road towards retribution.

It all begins in the steamy rural backwater of Moat County, Florida, where things have been done the same way for decades, yet change is bubbling beneath the surface.  Boyish Jack Jansen (Efron), son of the local newspaper publisher, has just returned home after being kicked out of college, only to take the lowly job of paperboy.  But that too changes when his idolized journalist brother Ward (McConaughey) comes to town from Miami on the trail of a story that could make his career.

Bringing in tow his hotshot writing partner Yardley (Oyelowo) and the alluring death-row groupie Charlotte Bless (Kidman), Ward plans to prove that an innocent man has been railroaded on his way to the electric chair. With Jack as their driver, the quartet arranges to meet Hillary Van Wetter (Cusack), the seedy alligator hunter hastily convicted of killing the local sheriff, at the prison.  But what erupts between them all is a tangled web of sexual tension, mixed motives and shadowy facts that will set off not only a search for the truth but a chain reaction of passion and violence. Observing it all is Jack’s only real confidante — the disregarded family maid Anita (Gray) – who watches in dismay as his innocence is turned inside out.