Grace Of Monaco has had a few issues. It was originally due for a prime Oscar-bait Christma release in the US, but it got caught up in a massive battle between director Olivier Dahan and the notoriously cut-happy producer Harvey Weinsten, who wanted to release his own version the movie. The fight resulted in the movie getting shunted and it’s unclear when it will come out in the US.

However in the UK there’s a different distributor, Warner Bros., and so a lot fewer problems. They’ve now who’ve set a June 6th British release, as well as briging out a poster and full trailer, which you can see here.

Here’s the synopsis: ‘Set in 1962, six years after her celebrated Wedding of the Century, GRACE OF MONACO is an intimate snapshot of a year in the life of the twentieth century’s most iconic Princess – Grace Kelly – as she strived to reconcile her past and her present, a yearning for a return to the big screen with her newfound role as a mother of two, monarch of a European principality and wife to Prince Ranier III.

‘While contemplating overtures from Alfred Hitchcock to return to her career in Hollywood, Grace found herself plunged into a personal crisis when Rainier’s modernization of an ailing Monaco was halted by Charles de Gaulle – the French President – and his attempts to not only impose French taxation on Monaco, but reclaim the principality for France by force.

‘The full-blown international crisis and impending French invasion that loomed – would pose a crisis not just for her family, her marriage and her country, but in Grace’s private life. It would become the moment in which a cinematic icon, an American far from home, would have to face a tough decision – return to her celebrated status as a movie star, globally loved and adored, or accept that she will never act again, embrace her new role and her new identity, her duty to her husband, her children, and the world’s second smallest country that has now become her home.

‘Grace of Monaco is a real-life fairytale, a sweeping romance, a portrait of the cinematic legend of Princess Grace and a realization that love is much more than a passion, but an obligation.’ [Read more…]

Grace Of Monaco has already proved a tad controversial, as the European principality – which is notoriously protective of the late Grace Kelly (perhaps unsurprisingly as she’s the mother of current monarch, Albert II) – has already come out to claim the movie is inaccurate.

However as nobody’s seen it, we’ll have to wait and see what the end product is like. Now the first images have arrived, via The Playlist, showing us Nicole Kidman as Princess Grace.

The film concentrates on a time when Monaco was in a conflict with France and Grace Kelly (Kidman), who by then had given up acting and was the small country’s princess, worked to prevent a coup after French president Charles de Gaulle handed Grace’s husband Crown Prince Rainier (Tim Roth) a six-month deadline to reform Monaco’s financial laws and status as an extreme tax haven. Frank Langella, Parker Posey, Milo Ventimiglia, and Paz Vega also star. (It’s the film’s depiction of this time as an extreme consitutional crisis and Grace’s role in it that Monaco is protesting, as well as for “pointlessly glamorizing” her life).

No release date is currently set, but it’s expected to get an Oscar push, so a late 2013 release is likely.