Kevin Hart is going for something a bit more serious alongside Bryan Cranston in The Upside. The film is a remake of The Intouchables, the 2011 French dramedy that ranks among the highest-grossing non-English-language films of all time with a worldwide take north of $426 million.
In the film, Dell (Kevin Hart) is a recent felony parolee who needs to find work before he has to “tell it to the judge.” Phillip (Bryan Cranston) is a quadriplegic billionaire who needs a caretaker. The pair strikes up an unlikely friendship after the expected initial setbacks, and from then on it’s new lifestyles and unexpected shared experiences for the unlikely duo.
Nicole Kidman, Julianna Margulies, and Aja Naomi King also star the film, which was originally set up at the Weinstein Company, and what should have been a smooth path from its 2017 Toronto Film Festival premiere into last year’s Oscar race was upended by Harvey Weinstein’s downfall. That scandal forced The Upside to miss its original March 2018 release date because there was no money to promote it. After Lantern Capital took possession of TWC’s assets, it set the film for release via STX.
The Upside hits screens on January 11, 2019
