Promised Land

Promised Land is a 2012 American drama film directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Frances McDormand, Rosemarie DeWitt and Hal Holbrook. The screenplay is written by Damon and Krasinski based on a story by Dave Eggers. Promised Land follows two petroleum landmen who visit a rural town in an attempt to buy drilling rights from the local residents. Damon was originally attached to direct the film, but he was replaced by Van Sant. Filming took place mainly in Pittsburgh from early to mid-2012. During filming and afterward, the film's highlighting of the resource extraction process hydraulic fracturing, known as "fracking," emerged as a topic of debate. The film had a limited release in the United States on , 2012 and followed with a nationwide expansion on , 2013. The film had its international premiere and received Special Mention Award at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2013. It received mixed reviews from critics, although the National Board of Review named it one of the top ten films of 2012, and was a box office bomb, grossing just $8 million against a $15 million budget. Plot Steve Butler has caught the eyes of top management at his employer, Global Crosspower Solutions, an energy company that specializes in obtaining natural gas trapped underground through a process known as fracking. Butler has an excellent track record for quickly and cheaply persuading land owners to sign mineral rights leases that grant drilling rights over to his employer. Butler and his partner Sue Thomason arrive in an economically struggling Pennsylvania farming town whose citizens are proud of having family farms passed from one generation to the next.