Saoirse Ronan Goes Green for 'The Outrun'

It's been a minute since Anglophiles heard anything about The Outrun, the film based on the best-selling memoir of the same name by Amy Liptrot, but the Oscar-bait movie is finally about to get its first release date as part of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The project was initially announced in January 2022 as awards season was gearing up for its first in-person year. German screenwriter/director Nora Fingscheidt (The Unforgivable) was attached to helm the project and co-write the adapted screenplay along with Liptrot. Saoirse Ronan was announced as attached to star as the fictionalized version of Liptrot and would executive produce, with a plan to film that summer.

The film basically disappeared after that, with only a note here and there about production studios optioning it and who would be grabbing the right to distribute internationally. So the sudden appearance of the title on the Sundance list at the end of 2023 was a slight surprise, though not an unwelcome one. Moreover, as a film set up for an awards run from the top, debuting at Sundance is a tried and true method of building momentum, even if it's not the current favorite way for production studios to get the most bang for the buck. (That would be doing the one-two punch of the Venice Film Festival, followed by the Toronto Film Festival, and then dropping the film in American theaters just before Thanksgiving.)

But considering the subject matter, addiction, homecoming, and the struggle of hitting rock bottom, a long lead will probably do The Outrun the most favors in, well, the long run.