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Changeling (film)

Changeling
On a white background, the top left of the poster is dominated by a woman's head looking down on a much smaller silhouette of a child in the bottom right corner. The woman is pale with prominent red lips and is wearing a brown cloche hat. Across the top of the poster are the names "Angelina Jolie" and "John Malkovich" in uppercase white. Adjacent to the child is the title, "Changeling" in uppercase black. Above are the words, "A true story" in uppercase red. Underneath is the tagline, in uppercase black: "To find her son, she did what no-one else dared."
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Produced by
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Starring
Music by Clint Eastwood
Cinematography Tom Stern
Edited by
Production
companies
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date
  • October 24, 2008 (2008-10-24)
Running time
 141 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $55 million
Box office $113 million

Changeling is a 2008 American mystery thriller film directed, co-produced and scored by Clint Eastwood and written by J. Michael Straczynski, that explores child endangerment, female disempowerment, political corruption, mistreatment of mental health patients, and the repercussions of violence. Based partly on real-life events – the 1928 "Wineville Chicken Coop" kidnapping and murder case in present-day Mira Loma, California – the film stars Angelina Jolie as a woman supposedly reunited with a boy she immediately realizes is not her missing son. When, however, she tries to demonstrate this to the police and city authorities, she is vilified as delusional and an unfit mother.

Straczynski spent a year researching the story after hearing about the Wineville Chicken Coop case from a contact at Los Angeles City Hall. Almost all of the film's script was drawn from thousands of pages of documentation. His first draft became the shooting script and his first film screenplay to be produced. Ron Howard had meant to direct the film, but scheduling conflicts led to his replacement by Eastwood. Instead, Howard and his Imagine Entertainment partner Brian Grazer produced Changeling alongside Malpaso Productions' Robert Lorenz and Eastwood. Universal Pictures financed and distributed the film.

Several actors campaigned for the leading role; ultimately, the key factor in Eastwood's decision to cast Jolie was his feeling that her face would suit the 1920s period setting. The film also stars Jeffrey Donovan, Jason Butler Harner, John Malkovich, Michael Kelly and Amy Ryan. While some characters are composites, most are based on actual people. Principal photography, which began on October 15, 2007 and concluded a few weeks later in December, took place in Los Angeles and other locations in southern California. Eastwood's low-key direction led actors and crew to note the calmness of the set and the short working days. In post-production, scenes were supplemented with computer-generated skylines, backgrounds, vehicles and people.


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Wikipedia

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