From the man who brought you gross-out looney-tooner "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut" comes a rip-roaring rollercoaster ride examining the interior lives of three socially oppressed women in existential crisis.
Hmm...
You can understand why novelist Michael Cunningham thought wires had been crossed when, two years ago, producer Scott Rudin called about adapting his 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning book "The Hours" for the big screen.
Inspired by the life and work of canonised British author Virginia Woolf, "The Hours" was deemed unfilmable - the drama being too internalised.
The obvious solution would've been to shoot a feature-length dream sequence played out in high-kicking jazz numbers. Unfortunately this bright idea had already been taken...
Instead Rudin referred to accomplished playwright David Hare (who had recently got Nicole Kidman naked for "The Blue Room") for a more subtle approach.
Hare snapped up the opportunity, confident he could make suicidal depression digestible for the popcorn crowd without sugaring the difficult-to-swallow bits. His peers were convinced Hare had lost the plot, but Paramount gave the project a green-for-go.
To seal the deal, Rudin approached A-List triumvirate Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Gwyneth Paltrow - the latter to play a clinically depressed 50s housewife.
Gwynnie did a masterclass in sullen for Rudin's "The Royal Tenenbaums", but when powerhouse brooder Julianne Moore threw her hat in the ring, Gwyneth was blown away like Kate Moss in a hurricane.
A year passed before Hare typed the final Fade Out. About the same time, "Billy Elliot" director Stephen Daldry was walking the Hollywood boulevards for his next screen opus.
The life-affirming undercurrents of "The Hours" instantly struck a chord, and he signed up for megaphone duties.
Meanwhile, Paramount sold overseas rights to Miramax, giving Harvey Weinstein the chance to muscle in on Rudin's action.
It was a case of nuclear friction, and the fallout resulted in the movie being pulled from its debut slot at the Venice Film Festival.
The heavyweight duo clashed over every detail, including the minimalist score by Philip Glass (later nominated for a Golden Globe) and the decision to obscure Kidman's movie star looks with a prosthetic conk.
The actress also had reservations about laying on the latex, thinking it might be a distraction.
It wasn't until she teamed the beak with the bird鈥檚 nest wig that she really took flight as Woolf. The manic fluttering and self-conscious stoop seemed to come naturally after that, and so the nose stuck.
In fact, Kidman became so possessive over the role that when Daldry enlisted a hand-double to shoot action close-ups of Woolf scribbling, the Aussie star hopped a plane back to Blighty (on her own dollar) to write the impostor out of the equation.
It was an emotionally fraught time for the recent divorcee, who channelled the trauma of her split with Tom Cruise into her portrayal of Woolf. Of the Golden Globe-winning performance she says, "I was in a nihilistic state anyway."
Now in the thick of awards season, things look decidedly brighter for Nicole Kidman. And for Stephen Daldry, another Oscar nod offers the chance of recompense after losing the Best Director statuette to Steven Soderbergh (for "Traffic") in 2000.
But the what the industry-watchers really want to know is: if "The Hours" wins for Best Picture, will Rudin let Weinstein touch his gong?
