‘Love & Mercy’ Filmmaker Bill Pohlad’s ‘Dreamin’ Wild’ Acquired by Roadside Attractions

“Love & Mercy” director Bill Pohlad is back with another offbeat musician biopic called “Dreamin’ Wild,” which was just acquired by Roadside Pictures (who also released “Love & Mercy”).

This time around Pohland is charting the life of Donnie and Joe Emerson, who recorded an album called “Dreamin’ Wild” in the late 1970s at a state-of-the-art studio built by their father on the family’s 1600-acre farm in rural Washington. The album didn’t do anything and Donnie embarked on an equally obscure solo career. But in 2012, the album was rediscovered as a lost classic and re-released by hip Seattle-based record label Light in the Attic Records. (Ariel Pink also covered a song from the album around that time.)

“While the album’s rediscovery brings hopes of second chances, it also brings long-buried emotions as Donnie, his wife Nancy, brother Joe, and father Don Sr. come to terms with the past and their newly found fame,” the official synopsis reads.

Leaning on an approach he employed on “Love & Mercy,” Pohlad is casting pairs of actors to portray the bothers at two different points in their lives – Casey Affleck is playing the older Donnie Emerson and Noah Jupe plays the younger version, while Walton Goggins and Jack Dylan Grazer offer unique approaches to Donnie’s brother Joe. Beau Bridges, Zooey Deschanel and Chris Messina also star.

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“I’m honored to be back with Roadside Attractions for my next film since ‘Love & Mercy’,” Pohlad said in an official statement. “I’m hoping that audiences will connect with this family’s heart-felt story as much as with Donnie’s extraordinary music.”

“As he proved with his debut Love & Mercy, nobody understands the power of music to heal and transform lives better than Bill Pohlad.  We are so excited to bring his second film, the story of a family whose lives were changed by making one classic record, to theatrical audiences this summer,” said Eric d’Arbeloff, Roadside Attractions Co-President in an official statement.

“Dreamin’ Wild” will open in theaters on August 4.

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