New WOMAN IN GOLD Trailer Features Helen Mirren & Ryan Reynolds

Watch the new trailer for The Weinstein Company’s WOMAN IN GOLD – opening April 1st.

WOMAN IN GOLD is the remarkable true story of one woman’s journey to reclaim her heritage and seek justice for what happened to her family.

Sixty years after she fled Vienna during World War II, an elderly Jewish woman, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), starts her journey to retrieve family possessions seized by the Nazis, among them Klimt’s famous painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.

Together with her inexperienced but plucky young lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), she embarks upon a major battle which takes them all the way to the heart of the Austrian establishment and the U.S. Supreme Court, and forces her to confront difficult truths about the past along the way.

For director Simon Curtis, his introduction to the story of Maria Altmann came through watching a program made for the BBC’s Imagine documentary series. Presented by his friend Alan Yentob and entitled “Stealing Klimt,” it recounted the tale of the painting, Altmann’s family and her battle to reclaim the paintings which had once hung in her childhood home, and featured extensive interviews with Altmann in particular, as well as Randol Schoenberg and Hubertus Czernin, the two men most instrumental in helping her to eventually triumph.

For many reasons, Curtis found himself deeply affected by Maria Altmann’s story and pitched it as a potential feature to Christine Langan, Head of BBC Films. “It spoke to so many things that interest me in the way that it bolted the Second World War and the Holocaust to contemporary America,” says Curtis, who had recently made his acclaimed feature directing debut with MY WEEK WITH MARILYN for BBC Films and the Weinstein Company. “To me, the painting and Maria Altmann seemed to be emblematic of the entire 20th century, both originating in Vienna in its golden age at the beginning of the century and both ending in the United States at the end of the American century.”

WOMAN IN GOLD’s original score is a collaboration between Martin Phipps and Oscar winner Hans Zimmer.

To portray the indomitable, headstrong and feisty Maria Altmann, Helen Mirren was Curtis’ first and only choice. “Although I knew Helen, I’d never directed her,” he says. “So it was a thrill when she shared my enthusiasm for the script. She’s perfect for the role because she’s intelligent and very much her own woman. She doesn’t suffer fools. She’s of Russian descent and credible as someone from a Jewish milieu. She has both the wit and the anger of the character. We were very lucky to get her.”

“Helen is just a consummate actress who can turn her hand to anything,” adds Thompson. “She’s subtle and delicate; she’s also funny and irreverent. She’s got all the right characteristics for Maria, including a sense of iconoclasm.”

With Mirren on board as Maria, it was Harvey Weinstein who first suggested Ryan Reynolds for the role of Randy Schoenberg. The odd-couple dimension to WOMAN IN GOLD’s central relationship made everyone realize that Weinstein’s suggestion was an inspired one, with Reynolds’ natural wit and charm delivering an audience-friendly boost to the character.

“Ryan’s got the intellect, the wit, the lightness of touch and the depth, all of which were very important for this,” says Thompson. “He’s a great choice and he immersed himself very powerfully into the character.”

“Harvey called me and said, ‘Hey Reynolds, it’s your lucky day,’” recalls the actor. “He was right. It’s a tremendous story that I had a passing knowledge of, only because I had seen the painting at a Klimt exhibition when I was a young kid backpacking through Europe. The story is fascinating, and the chance to spend a few months with the great Helen Mirren was a privilege.”

For Mirren, Altmann’s story was a new discovery. “Stories like this that come out of real life have extra piquancy and emotional content because you know that it was true,” she remarks. “It’s that classic story of the weak versus the strong and when the weak win out over the strong, that’s always a meaningful human story. I think most of us identify with that. A story like Maria’s is so important to tell. And that’s the great thing about film: it can preserve a story.”

Maria Altmann passed away in 2011, at the age of 94.