Ben Wheatley is back with another strange trip to the dark side. The Kill List filmmaker’s latest is In the Earth, a movie he managed to make mostly in secret during the pandemic, because he’s a sly one, that Ben Wheatley. And now, this new movie is headed to Sundance. The first In the Earth teaser promises all sorts of ominous goings-on, and the film’s subject matter is bound to make some people uneasy – because it deals with a deadly virus. Watch the In the Earth teaser below.
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The Sundance Institute has announced its lineup of movies for next month’s annual film festival, which has been radically revamped because of the pandemic. Sundance 2021 will feature virtual screenings accessible to people across the country from the comfort of their own homes, as well as in-person theatrical offerings through drive-ins and independent arthouses in select cities. /Film will be covering the festival remotely, and I’ve combed through today’s complete list of films and selected 10 movie that we’re especially excited about.
Get details about new movies from Edgar Wright, Ben Wheatley, Rebecca Hall, Jerrod Carmichael, and many more below, and then dive into the full list of titles to see if you can guess which movies we’ll all still be talking about a year from now. Read More »
The size of your dreams can often depend on where you grow up. Since 14-year old Mouse (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) lives in the tough streets of Baltimore in the Sundance selected drama Charm City Kings, his options aren’t exactly plentiful. That’s why right now he only has his sights set on joining the Midnight Clique of dirt-bike riders. But first, he needs his own bike. The only problem is the opportunities to get enough cash together for a bike are few and far between, and as the Charm City Kings trailer reveals, it usually includes taking a path that turns teen dreams into nightmares.
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There’s always been a lot of pressure that comes with turning 40 years old. It’s the birthday that pushes you “over the hill,” and it can be the start of a midlife crisis, especially if you feel like you haven’t lived up to your full potential. That’s exactly where protagonist Radha Blank finds herself in a new Sundance selected indie, which she also wrote and directed.
The Forty-Year Old Version follows Radha as a playwright who was once named as one of the 30 under 30 playwrights to watch. But now she’s 40, and she doesn’t have much to show everyone who was watching. So what else does she have to do except reinvent herself as a rapper named RadhaMUSPrime? It just might allow her to get her thoughts out there without dealing with all the stuffy white bullshit in the stage world. Watch The Forty-Year Old Version trailer below to see for yourself. Read More »
We’re still many months away from Sundance 2021, but rather than delay the inevitable, the Sundance Film Festival has already begun planning for how they’re going to handle the fest in the age of COVID-19. There was a time not so long ago when we were hoping that the coronavirus would be a distant memory when 2021 rolled around, but that’s clearly not going to happen. With that in mind, Sundance 2021 will host online screenings and also expand to theaters outside of Utah.
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The 2020 Sundance Film Festival is underway, and we’ve already seen a lot of great movies in the mountains of Park City, Utah. But this year, studios and distributors are being a little more cautious when it comes to picking up any of the buzzed about movies playing at the festival. Last year saw some big deals result in disappointing box office returns, and without many big movies garnering loads of attention, the Sundance market is moving at a slower pace than usual. But even so, there are already some movies that have been picked up, and we’ve got a list of them rounded up below that will be continuously updated. Read More »
The best part about an indie movie becoming a critical or commercial hit is watching what the filmmaker does next. Do they take that success and use it to helm a big-budget blockbuster? Do they follow up with another personal film? If you’re Academy Award-winning writer/director Tom McCarthy, you take the success of the hard-hitting Spotlight and make a detective noir movie for kids co-starring a 1500-pound “pet” polar bear. The result, Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made is a delightful new addition to Disney+ that somehow still makes sense as McCarthy’s next project, and it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
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Update: Deadline is now reporting that the Palm Springs deal is actually worth $22 million, not just the $17,500,000.69 that was previously reported. Apparently there is a “built in bonus structure” involved which was not mentioned in the official press release, making it an even more impressive acquisition and bolstering its position as the biggest Sundance deal in history. Our original article follows.
Andy Samberg’s Palm Springs just broke the nicest records at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival this year. Hulu and Neon acquired the romantic-comedy for $17.5 million…and 69 cents. The number broke Sundance sale records for the biggest acquisition deal, sailing past Nate Parker’s 2016 film The Birth of a Nation by, yes, 69 cents. And while Hulu and Neon made a historic deal worthy of a few winks and nudges, Apple and A24 celebrated a more serious record-breaking deal in their acquisition of Boys State, a buzzy documentary that at $12 million, became the highest-paid documentary in Sundance history.
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During the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, I took a trip to the moon.
Spaced Out, a virtual reality experience from French digital artist Pierre “Pyaré” Friquet, is one of the most transporting, immersive things I’ve ever tried. Donning a bathing suit, a floatation device, and an underwater VR headset equipped with a snorkel, I floated on the surface of a pool while being visually transported across the surface of a psychedelic, kaleidoscopic moon, all set to the actual audio from the real Apollo 11 mission.
The best part? You may be able to experience it yourselves one day, because Pyaré hopes to expand it around the world. Read more about this experience below.
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The 2020 Sundance Film Festival is coming to a close, and the awards for various achievements in filmmaking have been announced. As usual, the awards were spread out among a wide variety of films, honoring dramatic narratives, documentaries, world cinema, and more. But one movie came away with the top prizes from jurors and audiences.
Coming Away with the U.S. Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic category, as well as the Audience Award, is Minari from director Lee Isaac Chung. The film follows a 7-year-old Korean-American boy whose life is turned upside down when his father decides to move their family to rural Arkansas and start a farm in the mid-1980s. But there are plenty of other awards that were handed out, and you can learn about all of them with the full list of 2020 Sundance Film Festival awards winners below. Read More »
