Berlin market-bound “The Trouble With Jessica,” which stars Rufus Sewell, Shirley Henderson and Olivia Williams, has launched its first trailer. It is being repped for global sales by Parkland Pictures.
The black comedy tells the story of two couples who find themselves having to move a dead body to ensure their imminent house sale doesn’t collapse.
Sewell (“Old”) and Williams (“The Father”) play one of the couples, Richard and Beth, while Henderson (“Harry Potter”) and Alan Tudyk (“Rogue One”) play their friends Sarah and Tom. Indira Varma (“Obi Wan Kenobi”) plays the eponymous doomed Jessica.
In the first trailer, which Variety unveils exclusively below ahead of the film’s Berlin market premiere later this month, the two couples are seen panicking after their friend Jessica dies by suicide in Sarah and Tom’s garden just as they are on the brink of selling the house for some much-needed cash. Panicking the buyer will pull out of the sale if they find out what happened, Sarah and Tom persuade Richard and Beth to help them re-locate Jessica’s body.
“She did it here,” Tudyk tells Henderson resignedly in the trailer.
“What if she hadn’t?” Henderson replies pointedly, setting the plan in motion.
But it turns out moving a dead body is about as straightforward as it sounds, especially with nosy neighbors and police sniffing about.
Matt Winn (“Bad Mother”) directs from a screenplay he co-wrote with James Handel (“The Hoarder”). The film is produced by Sarah Sulick (“The Time of Their Lives”) through her Bright Pictures production label alongside Winn’s company “Yes Repeat No.” James Campbell is co-producing. Exec producers are John Cairns, Ulf Ek, Georgia Di Mattos Ek, Amy Gardner, Ahsan Mallick, Tom Stewart, Rosemary Ellis and Mark Stothert.
Check out the trailer below: