In a surprisingly big move, TiFF (Toronto International Film Festival), has announced it will showcase Amazon Studio’s upcoming new series, Homecoming. The show, which features Julia Roberts in the lead role, is set to headline the festival’s new tv slate.
The show is based on a popular podcast from Gimlet Media, that started in November of last year. Here’s the run down of the synopsis for the series:
Homecoming is a psychological thriller that centers on a caseworker, Heidi Bergman (Julia Roberts), at a facility treating soldiers returning from war, and Walter Cruz (Stephan James), a veteran eager to rejoin civilian life.
This is something of a major coup for the festival, even if just from Roberts involvement, but not altogether surprising. A number of big film festivals, including SXSW and Fantastic Fest, have been diversifying their offerings for the last few years, by offering up a few episodes of their upcoming TV shows, or shows from overseas. Homecoming, for instance will be showing 4 episodes at TiFF. It will then be released on Amazon Prime Video on November 2nd.
What do you all make of this? At a time where streaming is at a high, does it make sense to include TV shows at film festivals? Are you excited to see Julia Roberts make the jump to long form programming? Let us know in the comments below. In the meantime enjoy these other posters for the series, which co-stars Bobby Cannavale, Stephan James and Sissy Spacek.
