Lost David O. Russell Movie Starring Jessica Biel Gets New Title, U.K. Release

Director David O. Russell’s 2008 movie starring Jessica Biel will finally see the light of day

Back in 2008, when his future muse Jennifer Lawrence was still doing episodes of Medium, David O. Russell directed a satirical romantic comedy starring Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal. Called Nailed, the movie was completed but never got a theatrical release — until now. Yahoo Movies has confirmed that Arrow Films will be releasing Nailed in the U.K. in 2015, under the new title Politics of Love. Ironically, the film might get more attention now than it would have on its intended release date. Here’s why.

At the time Nailed was made, David O. Russell was on the verge of a career breakthrough. He had done well with Three Kings in 1999, but his most recent film was the “philosophical comedy” I Heart Huckabees, which charmed some critics and baffled others. Most of film’s press was generated by a leaked video of Russell’s on-set screaming match with star Lily Tomlin. Both the incident and the movie itself furthered Russell’s reputation as a mercurial oddball, whose idiosyncratic style of filmmaking challenged actors and audiences alike.

This was when Russell got to work on Nailed, which joined his resume of tough-to-categorize indie comedies like Spanking the Monkey. In the movie, Jessica Biel plays an uninsured waitress who gets accidentally shot in the head by a nail, and decides to make a political crusade of her injury. She heads to Washington and gets involved with an immoral congressman (Gyllenhaal) who, per Indiewire, “takes advantage of her sexually and politically.” Nailed was plagued by all kinds of production issues, most of them financial, although Russell’s lack of finesse with actors continued to be an issue: James Caan walked off set over an argument about how he should best choke on a cookie. After two years of stops and starts, Russell quit the film, with one key scene — the pivotal nail-in-the-head moment — still left unshot.

And then Russell’s career took a dramatic turn. His 2010 drama The Fighter opened to wide acclaim and garnered the director his first Oscar nomination. Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle followed, both of which were awards magnets and box-office success stories. Meanwhile, Nailed fell to a new producer, Kia Jam, who completed a cut of the film and submitted it for an MPAA rating in 2013. (It’s rated PG-13 for “sexual content and language.”) Jam’s cut is the one that was purchased by Arrow Films, and whether it will be released stateside is still unknown. Russell, who once called the film “a stillbirth,” is unlikely to get involved. But it will be interesting to see how the movie holds up, given that it marked Russell’s transition from I Heart Huckabees weirdness to The Fighter’s mainstream appeal.