‘Uprising’ to Open in 2 Movie Theaters

In a highly unorthodox move, a film that aired recently on NBC as a miniseries is migrating to the big screen.

Director Jon Avnet’s “Uprising,” which had its network premiere Nov. 4, is scheduled to be released theatrically on Friday for a limited run at the Laemmle Fairfax in Los Angeles and a theater in New York.

With a cast that includes Leelee Sobieski, Hank Azaria, David Schwimmer, Jon Voight and Donald Sutherland, the film--which has a running time of 2 hours, 52 minutes--won critical praise for its portrayal of the Jewish resistance against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto. As a TV miniseries, however, it suffered in the ratings because it went up against the seventh game of the World Series and the Emmy Awards.

Avnet, who co-wrote the film with Paul Brickman, said he hopes the film helps refute the commonly held belief that “Jews went like sheep to the trains and were passive.”

“Somehow or another, it’s implied that in that passivity, to some extent, they were a culpable party in their own genocide,” Avnet said. “I think that is an enormous fallacy and final insult to the dignity of 6 million Jews” who perished in the Holocaust.

Avnet said seeing the movie released in theaters in the United States is a “dream come true.” Warner Bros., which is distributing the film, always planned to release the film theatrically in Europe.

As for its box-office potential, Avnet joked, “I don’t think it’s going to seriously threaten ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.’”