Ben Affleck’s new gangster movie Live by Night just debuted its first trailer early last month, with a January release date, which hinted that the film would probably be in the running for that little awards show called the Oscars in 2017. Now it’s official, as the film has a December limited release date before it goes wide early next year.

Variety reports that Live by Night will premiere on December 25 before its official release on January 13, which puts it right in the awards season sweet spot. This is Affleck’s fourth time in the director’s chair, and his first since 2012’s Argo. Based on Dennis Lehane’s novel of the same name, the film chronicles the life of Joe Coughlin, a police officer’s son who slips into the seedy underworld of gangsters and bootlegging in Prohibition-era Boston. Affleck directed the film from a script he himself adapted from the novel.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Live by Night is set in the roaring `20s when Prohibition hasn’t stopped the flow of booze in an underground network of gangster-run speakeasies. The opportunity to gain power and money is there for any man with enough ambition and nerve and Joe Coughlin, the son of the Boston Police Superintendent, long ago turned his back on his strict upbringing for the spoils of being an outlaw. But even among criminals there are rules and Joe breaks a big one: crossing a powerful mob boss by stealing his money and his moll. The fiery affair ends in tragedy, setting Joe on a path of revenge, ambition, romance and betrayal that propels him out of Boston and up the ladder of Tampa’s steamy rum-running underworld.

The film also stars Sienna Miller, Chris Messina, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, and Elle Fanning.

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