Written and directed by Adriana Trigiani, the best-selling author of "The Shoemaker's Wife," "Big Stone Gap" will star Ashley Judd (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Patrick Wilson (The Full Monty), Whoopi Goldberg (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), Jane Krakowski (Nine), John Benjamin Hickey (The Normal Heart), Judith Ivey (The Audience), Anthony LaPaglia (A View From the Bridge), Chris Sarandon (A Light in the Piazza), Jasmine Guy (Chicago) and Mary Testa (Xanadu). Picturehouse Films is scheduled to release the movie nationwide on Oct. 9.

The producers describe the story thus: "Shot entirely on location in Trigiani’s hometown," the movie "is the story of proud working people and their lives in a coal mining town nestled in the southwest corner of Virginia, deep in the Appalachian Mountains. Ave Maria Mulligan (Judd), the town’s self-proclaimed spinster, has resigned herself to a quiet life of singlehood and being useful. She works in her family’s pharmacy, delivers the prescriptions herself, and directs the town’s annual outdoor drama until one day she learns of a long-buried family secret that changes the course of her life forever."