“The Rivals of Amziah King” is nearly here.
The movie, which premiered at last year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, is finally coming out this August, with production company Black Bear releasing it themselves. It’ll arrive in limited release on Aug. 14 before going wide on Aug. 21. To tide you over, you can watch the brand-new trailer below.
Knowing too much about “The Rivals of Amizah King” is to rob it of some of its elemental power. According to the official synopsis, the film “follows the charismatic and musically gifted Amaziah King (Matthew McConaughey) who herds a bluegrass-playing band of misfits while overseeing the premier honey-making operation in town.” He reconnects with his estranged foster daughter (a revelatory Angelina LookingGlass) and goes up against a rival honey-maker (Kurt Russell, oozing villainous intent).
As the trailer hints at, the film is a constantly shape-shifting narrative that threads the line between hardscrabble drama, revenge thriller and something more mythical, almost Terrence Malick-adjacent. It’s genuinely unlike anything you’ve ever seen, galvanizing and enriching in a singular way, which might explain why it has taken so long to finally come out.
Cole Sprouse, Owen Teague, Scott Shepherd, Rob Morgan and Tony Revolori also star.
“The Rivals of Amziah King” is the sophomore film by Andrew Patterson, an Oklahoma filmmaker whose first film was “The Vast of Night.” That Amblin-esque story about a small town dealing with UFO sightings is one of the great debut features in recent memory. It had a similarly protracted journey, premiering at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2019 before being released by Prime Video, first in a handful of drive-in theaters and then finally on the streaming service in May 2020.
“The Rivals of Amziah King” will see limited release on Aug. 14 and wide release on Aug. 21, courtesy of Black Bear.
