In addition to being a legitimate Best Picture contender, McDonagh is a favorite in Best Original Screenplay, while McDormand is a threat to collect her second Best Actress trophy. THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI is a darkly comedic drama from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh (IN BRUGES).
The film itself is expected to do very well on the Oscars circuit, riding waves of positive buzz from its various festival showings. The feature movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was filmed in several locations near Asheville, including many days in downtown Sylva in May. Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell in particular are seen as the standouts, with many feeling their turns are awards-worthy. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a 2017 crime drama film written, co-produced, and directed by Martin McDonagh and starring Frances McDormand as a Missouri woman who rents three roadside billboards to call attention to her daughter's unsolved rape and murder. Critics consider this to be arguably his best offering, praising the emotional story and strong performances from its veteran cast. This puts it in third place for the year, behind Lady Bird (91,109) and The Big Sick (84,315). This is the latest film from writer/director Martin McDonagh, best known for idiosyncratic works like In Bruges (for which he earned an Oscar nomination) and Seven Psychopaths. This week’s winner on the theater average chart was Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, opening with an average of 80,542 in four theaters. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), an immature mother’s boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated.
After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter’s murder case, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, commissioning three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), the town's revered chief of police.