The Weinstein Company has released the first Lion trailer. The film is based on the true story of a man who was separated from his family as a child and as an adult goes looking for them with the help of Google Earth. I suppose if he tried to find them with Bing the film would be a tragedy.

Lion is the film The Weinstein Company is banking on as their Oscar picture this year. It’s set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is pretty much a required destination if you want to win Best Picture (the only film to buck the trend in the last ten years is Birdman, which played at NYFF but not TIFF). If Lion doesn’t connect with audiences, then the only other films they really have a shot with is Stephen Gaghan’s Gold or John Lee Hancock’s The Founder, but both of those open late in December. You can have a film open in the summer like Mad Max: Fury Road or at the very end of the year like The Revenant, but at the end of the day, the film with the Best Picture trophy is the one that played TIFF—Spotlight.

That’s why connecting with audiences at TIFF is so important, and judging by this trailer, Lion might hit all the right buttons or it may be too sentimental. I’m very curious to see how this one turns out.


Check out the trailer for Lion below. The film opens November 25th, and stars Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, David Wenham, and Sunny Pawar.

Here’s the official synopsis for Lion:

Five-year-old Saroo gets lost on a train which takes him thousands of Kilometers across India, away from home and family. Saroo must learn to survive alone in Kolkata, before ultimately being adopted by an Australian couple. Twenty-five years later, armed with only a handful of memories, his unwavering determination, and a revolutionary technology known as Google Earth, he sets out to find his lost family and finally return to his first home.

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Image via The Weinstein Company
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Image via The Weinstein Company
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Image via The Weinstein Company

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