Amazon Studios Buys ‘Uncle Frank’ Out of Sundance (EXCLUSIVE)

Amazon Studios has signed on to finance and distribute “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things,” a YA adaptation from Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman and FilmNation.

By Mike Fleming Jr

Amazon Studios has picked up Sundance love story Sylvie's Love, starring Tessa Thompson andNnamdi Asomugha,sources familiar with the deal tell The Hollywood Reporter.Eugene Ashe wrote and directed the movie, which follows a saxophone player (Asomugha) and aspiring TV producer (Thompson) as they fall in love and continually cross paths in late 50s/early 60s New York.Eva Longoria, Aja Naomi King, Wendi Mclendon-Covey and Jemima Kirke also star.The movie premiered in the U.S.

“Sylvie’s Love,” a sweeping period romance starring Tessa Thompson, has sold to Amazon Studios out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, sources close to the deal told Variety.

Sixty years. That’s how long a Louisiana judge sentenced Rob Richardson to serve for armed bank robbery. Garrett Bradley covers more than a third of that term in “Time,” and the cumulative impact — boiled down into an open-minded and deeply empathetic 81 minutes — will almost certainly rewire how Americans think about the prison-industrial complex.

Every summer, more than 1,000 teens swarm the Texas capitol building to attend Boys State, the annual American Legion-sponsored leadership conference where these incipient politicians divide into rival parties, the Nationalists and the Federalists, and attempt to build a mock government from the ground up.

PARK CITY, Utah — What do “Reservoir Dogs,” “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Clerks” and “Wet Hot American Summer” all have in common? The Sundance Film Festival.

Amy Schumer, Greg Berlanti, Ben Platt, Rosie O’Donnell, Julianne Moore, and Issa Rae are among the A-listers calling out major studios for donating to NRA-backed politicians. Over 100 actors, producers and industry creatives signed an open letter, urging Hollywood companies to end political contributions to candidates who take money from the NRA and vote against gun reform.

It took four movies before Lee Isaac Chung was ready to tell the kind of story first-timers so often rush to share straight out of the gate. Not a coming-of-age movie so much as a deeply personal and lovingly poetic rendering of his Korean American childhood — specifically, how it felt for his immigrant family to adjust to life in small-town Arkansas — “Minari” benefits from the maturity and perspective Chung brings to the project.

In the midst of a whirlwind press tour for her Sundance biopic “The Glorias,” activist icon Gloria Steinem reflected on the state of women’s reproductive rights in Hollywood and beyond.

PARK CITY, Utah — Twenty years after he blazed onto the film scene, Alan Ball is back with another American beauty.

Sony Pictures Classics has teamed with Sony’s Stage 6 Films to oversee the global release of Heidi Ewing’s feature narrative debut “I Carry You With Me (Te Llevo Conmigo),” a gay love story about two men who immigrate to the United States. The deal follows the movie’s enthusiastic reception at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The romantic drama debuted to multiple standing ovations in Park City, where it was shown in the NEXT section. It will be released later this year.

Amid the snow-covered mountains of Park City, Utah – South African filmmakers, producers, and directors have made a strong representation this year at Sundance – the largest independent film festival in the US.

Amazon Studios has picked up Alan Ball's family dramaUncle Frank.The Six Feet Under showrunnerwrote and directed the movie, which is set in 1973 and follows teenager Beth (Sophia Lillis), who leaves her rural hometown to study at New York University, where her estranged uncle Frank (Paul Bettany) is a revered literature professor.

The best political documentary at Sundance this year does not star Hillary Clinton or AOC, but a bunch of 17-year-old dudes.

By Mike Fleming Jr

By Mike Fleming Jr

Amazon Studios has nabbed North American rights to Phyllida Lloyd’s “Herself,” an Irish drama about a woman who builds her dream house after escaping an abusive marriage, Variety has learned.  The streaming service is planning a theatrical release for later this year.

Pete (Will Ferrell) and Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) are a prosperous American couple who’ve taken their two sons on a ski vacation to the Alps. Are they having fun yet? That’s a question that hovers over the movie, as the family members hit the slopes and make pilgrimages to the alpine-lodge restaurant, or retire to their room, where they always feel guilty about playing games or watching TV, since they could do that anywhere.

Uncle Frankmarks the return to feature filmmaking after a long hiatus for Alan Ball, the innovative showrunner behind TV's Six Feet Under and True Blood.