Wachowskis, Ryan Gosling, Ben Affleck, And More: 15 High Profile Toronto Debuts Most Likely To Succeed

[PHOTO GALLERY: The 15 Toronto Titles Most Likely To Succeed]

Anna Karenina, Joe Wright
The Tolstoy classic gets a gorgeous new adaptation courtesy of Joe Wright, who directs Keira Knightley for the third time after guiding her to an Academy Award nomination for Pride & Prejudice and earning six Oscar nods for Atonement. Knightley taking on the classics in a corset alone is a proven recipe for success, but add in her dueling suitors – Jude Law as Anna Karenina’s husband and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as her young lover – and the film’s sumptuous, bold stylistic choices, and Wright’s vision could strike a fresh chord with the familiar tale.

The Impossible, J.A. Bayona
A family is torn apart by the devastation of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in J.A. Bayona’s The Impossible, which propels us into the inconceivable experience of the victims who lost everything, and those lucky few who survived. As the parents at the center of the drama, Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts bring star wattage and emotion to the fore; the film’s Christmas-week theatrical debut promises inspirational holiday fare. Start stockpiling Kleenex now.

Hyde Park On Hudson, Roger Michell
Word around the festival circuit is Bill Murray’s gunning for Oscar in this biopic, about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt – and his wife Eleanor (Olivia Williams) and mistress (Laura Linney) as King George VI visits on the eve of WWII. Director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Changing Lanes) recently directed Peter O'Toole to an Best Actor nomination in Venus. Can he do it again with Murray?

The Paperboy, Lee Daniels
Lee Daniels’s sweaty, Southern-friend potboiler, about a reporter (Matthew McConaughey) investigating a death row inmate (John Cusack), earned notoriety at Cannes; will Toronto festival-goers react as divisively? Between the prospect of seeing Zac Efron break out into adult drama and Nicole Kidman in an eye-catching, hot-blooded turn as a woman involved with Cusack’s prisoner – not to mention, yes, Kidman tending to Efron’s jellyfish sting the old-fashioned way – art house audiences should be on the lookout for this one in limited release this October.

Emperor, Peter Webber
Tommy Lee Jones and Matthew Fox play General Douglas MacArthur and his General Bonner Fullers, respectively, in this period piece from director Peter Webber (Girl With a Pearl Earring). As Japan falls to the U.S. at the end of World War II, Fox’s Fuller finds the fate of the country in his hands as he searches the land for a lost love. Sumptuous production design and its leads should help Emperor find a distribution deal. (Bonus fun fact: it’s the first film to be granted access to film on the Imperial grounds in Japan.)

Previously: 10 Filmmaker-Driven TIFF Pics To Track, Including New Malick, Baumbach, Whedon, And Korine

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