2018 American film directed by Jason Reitman
The Front Runner is a 2018 American political drama film directed by Jason Reitman, based on the 2014 book All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid by Matt Bai, who co-wrote the screenplay with Reitman and Jay Carson. The film stars Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J. K. Simmons, and Alfred Molina. It chronicles the rise of American Senator Gary Hart, the front-runner candidate to be the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, and his subsequent fall from grace when media reports suggested he was having an extramarital affair.
The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2018, and was theatrically released in the United States on November 6, 2018, by Columbia Pictures. It received mixed reviews; while Jackman was praised for his performance, critics said the rest of the cast felt wasted and the film did not "dive deep enough into its central issues to make a compelling argument." The film was a box-office bomb, earning just $3.2 million against its $25 million budget.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.