UPDATE: I’m told this is headed to TIFF, maybe it’ll find a buyer there, but it’s been almost five months since its SXSW premiere, and still nothing.
Q. I read your article about the strong reviews that greeted Andrew Patterson’s “Rivals of the Amziah King” at SXSW. Why has nobody picked it up yet? You’d think a raved indie movie would get a bidding war going. (Gregory Berry)
You’re right, by now, we’d have probably heard about something. I asked around and have been told, by multiple buyers, that the price being asked by Black Bear & Heyday is too high. Many of the prestige studios have lost interest and dropped out of acquiring the film.
A few weeks ago, we were led to believe that Andrew Patterson’s “Rivals of the Amziah King” could be an awards contender. Then again, premiering to glowing reactions at SXSW is not necessarily an indication of quality. Films tends to get overpraised at the Austin-based event.
Turns out, with eight reviews logged in, ‘Amziah King’ sits at 65 on Metacritic. We all know how much stock studio heads put into aggregate scores, let alone hiring directors solely based on their aggregate scores, and that could very well be part of the reason why ‘Amziah King’ still lacks a distributor.
If ‘Amziah King’ wants a decent awards run then it probably needs an A24, Focus, or Neon to pick it up, but at this point I’m not really sure if that’s a realistic possibility. Buyers have been burned way too many times by SXSW overhype, and ‘Amziah King’ has several red flags popping up.
Shot in 2023, ‘Amziah King’ stars Matthew McConaughey, Kurt Russell, Owen Teague, Cole Sprouse, and Angelina LookingGlass. Dubbed as a a crime thriller, and set in Oklahoma, the film follows a man who oversees the premier honey-making operation in town, but the honey game is “ruthless” and everything he has built is soon threatened by the town’s rivals.
Patterson premiered his first film, the micro-budgeted “Vast of Night,” at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival. Amazon acquired distribution rights to the film, premiered it at TIFF and then released it on May 29, 2020 to positive reviews.
Although the budget on ‘Vast of Night’ wasn’t divulged, some reports had the total production cost at just under $500,000. Although I wasn’t a huge fan, there was so much energy, enthusiasm, and a clearcut love for its decades-old influences that many critics praised the film.