‘Dallas Buyers Club’ Release Moved Up To November

Focus Features is moving the release of Dallas Buyers Club up from December 6 to November 1.

The film makes its worldwide premiere early next month at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Had Dallas Buyers Club kept its original date, it would have opened against the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis and Scott Cooper’s Out of Furnace, which stars Christian Bale and Casey Affleck. It shares its new date with Gavin Hood’s Ender’s Game and Jon Turteltaub’s Last Vegas, starring Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Douglas.

Dallas Buyers Club is loosely based on the story of Ron Woodroof, a drug addicted, homophobic womanizer diagnosed with HIV who began smuggling anti-viral medications into the United States from all over the world.

In the film, Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) is in denial after being told he has 30 days left to live (Woodroof was given six months). He starts taking AZT, the only legal drug available in the United States, which almost kills him. With the help of his doctor, Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) and Rayon (Jared Leto), an HIV positive transsexual woman, he creates the Dallas Buyers Club, which provides members with non-toxic anti-viral medication that are illegal in the US.

Ron Woodroof lived for six years after his 1986 diagnosis and died on September 12, 1992.

Sharon Woodroof Braden and Yvette Carroll, Woodroof’s sister and daughter, said McConaughey — who lost 88 pounds for the role — was hard to look at.

“It’s hard to look back whenever you’ve lived through it; it’s really hard to look back at something like that. So I don’t look at the pictures that much,” Braden said. “The pictures of Matthew are breathtaking though. They look so like what Ronnie looked like when he was sick and how the disease progressed.” Braden also said that McConaughey has “that same swagger that Ron had,” and that she was excited that he’s also from Texas.

“I really think he has that personality where he can do what needs to be done.”