Anna Kendrick doesn’t feel like a winner after a game show appearance in the trailer for Netflix‘s Woman of the Hour.
Kendrick makes her feature directorial debut with the fact-based crime thriller that hits the streaming service on Oct. 18. Daniel Zovatto, Nicolette Robinson and Tony Hale round out the cast for the film that is based on the real-life story of Rodney Alcala, played by Zovatto.
Woman of the Hour centers on Cheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick), who wins a date with Zovatto on The Dating Game in 1978 without knowing that he is hiding a criminal past.
“I don’t date much — I don’t date at all, actually,” Kendrick’s character tells Zovatto in the film after they meet on the game show. “My agent said it would get me seen.”
Kendrick directed the film from Ian McDonald’s script, which appeared on the Black List in 2017. Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules produce the film.
Woman of the Hour premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023. In her review for The Hollywood Reporter, critic Lovia Gyarkye wrote, “In Woman of the Hour, Kendrick builds on the work she started in Alice, Darling — but now she is also behind the camera for this unnerving dramatization of serial killer Rodney Alcala’s appearance on a dating game show while in the midst of his murder spree.”
She continued, “Woman of the Hour, which premiered at TIFF before its Netflix acquisition, is an ambitious attempt to subvert true-crime genre expectations by giving voice to the survivors and victims of Alcala’s rampage.”
