It’s easy to say life is little more than a high stakes game. Who wins, who loses, and who gets to take home that pot at the end of the rainbow. For many years, the real winner was Molly Bloom, the subject of Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, Molly’s Game. For almost a decade she ran an exclusive poker escape for the rich and powerful. It all came crashing down in the end, but now that she is being played by Jessica Chastain in a Sorkin film, it appears Molly will be coming out on top again.
Sorkin, who won an Oscar for The Social Network’s screenplay and has also written the screenplays for Steve Jobs, A Few Good Men, and Moneyball, appears ready to craft his love for dialogue as well as a liberally adapted true story with his first stint in the director’s chair. He follows Chastain as Molly Bloom, a former Olympic skier who found herself falling into the lucrative world of celebrity gambling… and then fighting her way to the top of it.
She also saw it taken when, as it turns out, doing business with the Russian mob brings unwanted attention by the FBI. Viewed through the prism of Molly convincing criminal defense lawyer Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba) into taking her case, we suspect that there will be a lot of cinematic bluffing in this one too.
The trailer is below for the film, which also stars Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, and Chris O’Dowd.