Also in Monday morning's round-up of news briefs, Magnolia Pictures' The Queen of Versailles debuted strong in the specialty box office. Emile Hirsch in talks for Navy role and the Teamsters set contract with producers.
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It's hard to imagine that the documentary Lauren Greenfield initially set out to make when she started shooting The Queen of Versailles would have turned out to be anything other than grotesque. When the filmmaker, who previously directed the unflinching eating disorder investigation Thin, first approached her subjects Jackie Siegel and her billionaire husband David, it was to record them as they built their dream home, Versailles, a monstrous 90,000-square-foot Orlando abode that when completed would be the largest single-family house in the U.S. Like the Siegels themselves, the plans for Versailles displayed an astounding capacity for excess and extravagance with no accompanying sense of taste or restraint.
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