Call it “Long Day’s Journey to a Theatrical Release”!
After filming in 2022 and seemingly plagued by financing issues since then, a new(ish) film version of Eugene O’Neil’s posthumous Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play Long Day’s Journey Into Night will finally see a theatrical release in hopes of adding an Oscar to its résumé.
The news comes as Quiver announces a domestic run for the film beginning on Sept. 25, following a special screening at New York’s Lincoln Center on Sept. 14.
The film sees Academy Award winner Jessica Lange reprising the role of Mary, which won her a Tony in 2016. Jonathan Kent, the director of that Broadway production, makes his feature directorial debut with this film, which also stars Oscar nominee Ed Harris, Ben Foster, and Colin Morgan.
The screenplay is credited to David Lindsay-Abaire, a renown theatrical talent in his own right, having won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Rabbit Hole and two Tonys for the musical version of his play Kimberly Akimbo. The film film clocks in at a lean 109 minutes, which is certainly brisk for an O’Neil adaptation and suggest some major adaptation work by Lindsay-Abaire.
The release would mark the end of a lengthy journey to screens. Once filming completed, the film didn’t resurface until nearly three years later, when it premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival in February 2025 and then played at the Glasgow Film Festival.
The surprise late entry into the award season could potentially shake up some key races, Best Actress in particular. Lange is a two-time winner and a six-time nominee. After winning off her first at-bat for Tootsie in 1983, she won again in 1995 for Blue Sky. That film, thanks to the bankruptcy of its distributor Orion, waited four years before its eventual release.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night has been adapted for the screen several times, most notably in 1962 with a highly faithful adaptation that starred Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell and earned a Hepburn a Best Actress nomination.
