There has been some controversy surrounding Blake Lively recently. Earlier this week there was a rumor that Steven Soderbergh's next project, The Side Effects, lost funding because the director wanted to have the Gossip Girl star play the lead character. Add that to the fact that the blonde actress earned many negative reviews for her performance in last summer's Green Lantern, and you realize that the past few months haven't been supremely kind to her. Lucky for her she has an extremely high profile project coming out this year that very well could change everyone's perspective.

Lively is part of the very talented ensemble cast that Oliver Stone has brought together for Savages, a drama about a pair of pot growers that have to face off against a Mexican cartel when their girlfriend is kidnapped. The actress plays said girlfriend, meaning that she will share a lot of screentime with Oscar-winner Benicio Del Toro, who plays one of her captors. And now you can see what that will look like.

Universal Argentina Tweeted the first image from the release earlier today and while the still has since been removed, you can scope it out below or full-size over at The Playlist.



Savages, Stone's first movie since 2010's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, also stars Aaron Johnson, Taylor Kitsch, John Travolta, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch, Uma Thurman, Joel David Moore, and Trevor Donovan. The film arrives in theaters on September 28th and you can read more about it in our Blend Film Database.