The film company Bleecker Street dropped a trailer for its film adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend.
Nunez’s National Book Award–winning novel, published by Riverhead in 2018, tells the story of a woman who takes in the Great Dane that belonged to her late best friend and mentor. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the novel “breathtaking both in pain and in beauty; a singular book.”
The film adaptation is written and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel (What Maisie Knew), and stars Naomi Watts and Bill Murray.
In the trailer, Murray tells Watts about how he came to own the dog, Apollo, played in the film by Bing. “He’s there at the top of the hill, between the two bridges, silhouetted against the limpid sky.”
“You’re making this up,” Watts says.
“You could have a point, but the fact is the dog magically appeared,” Murray responds.
Later in the trailer, as Sharon Van Etten’s “Every Time the Sun Comes Up” plays, Watts tells her therapist, “I could feel him missing Walter in the same way I did.”
“The dog provides essential emotional support,” the therapist says.
“I guess I saw it the other way around, like I’m the emotional support human and it’s the dog that can’t cope,” Watts responds.
The Friend opens in theaters nationwide on April 4.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
