The Last Showgirl is high-stepping into theaters later this year. Roadside Attractions has acquired the film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month and features a career-best performance from Pamela Anderson. Deadline reports that the distributor plans to release the film during the upcoming awards season.
Say Roadside Attractions’ co-presidents Howard Cohen and Eric d’Arbeloff, “Pamela Anderson will bring some much-needed stardust to the world of cinema this fall in Gia Coppola’s extraordinary film. We are thrilled to join our friends at Utopia to release this film into awards season.” The Last Showgirl premiered at TIFF earlier this month, and has earned rave reviews from critics, with an 84% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatos. Much of the praise for the film has been focused on Anderson, who has attracted awards buzz for her bravura lead performance. In her review, Collider’s Shaina Weatherhead was no less effusive about Anderson, saying she “plays Shelley’s lows with heart-wrenching conviction, drowning out soft-spoken sweetness with guttural rage.”
What Is ‘The Last Showgirl’ About?
Anderson stars in The Last Showgirl as Shelley, a veteran dancer in a Las Vegas stage show, who is informed by her stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista) that it’s going to shut down in two weeks. Adrift after losing the only job she’s ever had, Shelley tries to reconnect with Hannah (Billie Lourd), a daughter she barely knows, and attempts to figure out what she’s going to do with the rest of her life. Jamie Lee Curtis stars as Shelley’s best friend Annette, a brash cocktail waitress; Brenda Song and Kiernan Shipka co-star as her fellow dancers; and Jason Schwartzman (director Gia Coppola’s cousin) appears as a director Shelley has an audition with.
The Last Showgirl was written by Kate Gersten (The Good Place); it was based on her unproduced play Body of Work, which was inspired by a visit to the now-closed Jubilee! stage show in Las Vegas. It is produced by Robert Schwartzman, and executive produced by Nick Darmestaedter, Gersten, Michael Clofine for DI Entertainment, Jessamine Burgum and Kara Durrett for Pinky Promise, Alex Orlovsky, Duncan Montgomery, and Jack Selby for High Frequency Entertainment. It will also feature an original song, “Beautiful That Way”, performed and co-written by Miley Cyrus.
The Last Showgirl will be released later this year; no precise release date has yet been announced. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
