Heads Up For THE PAPERBOY – First Official Trailer Hits The Web

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New clip promises betrayal, suspense, and Nicole Kidman straddling a dude.

The first official trailer has emerged online for The Paperboy, the Lee Daniels-directed pulp thriller which stars Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman, John Cusack and others.  Around the Complex, you might say The Paperboy has become an item of considerable interest.  Based on this new clip, there’s nothing to suggest impending disappointment.  The film appears to possess a few of the key elements that are virtually fail-safe in terms of getting yours truly out to the box office.

Chief among these is a jailbreak caper involving a rowboat.

I’m also encouraged to see that Matthew McConaughey is being deployed as a proper hillbilly, rather than trying to polish the guy up into something more sophisticated, as is commonly done these days.  McConaughey will never be more convincing than he is in the guise of a sweaty cracker like Ward Jansen, and it appears that the brains behind The Paperboy have the requisite vision to pick up on this innate quality.

John Cusack looks positively sinister playing the part of Hillary Van Wetter, the jailbroken boyfriend of an equally sinister-looking Nicole Kidman, who seems to have found a way to cope with her mid-to-latter forties that is in no way unappealing.

But the real story of The Paperboy will be whether or not audiences can accept High School Musical alum Zac Efron doing anything that doesn’t involve dancing across a cafeteria table.  Thus far, that hasn’t proven to be the case, but you can judge the clip for yourself:

The Paperboy is due out October 5th, which will give Millenium Films about two months to milk the presence of Efron for all its worth.  However the marketing aspect of the film works itself out, you can bet that there will be a Criminal Complex contigent in the audience when The Paperboy finally makes it into theaters.