If you’ve ever attended Austin, Texas’ SXSW festival, you’ve likely experienced the strange change that occurs when the Film portion of the event transitions into the Music section. Suddenly, everyone in the crowd has a guitar or a very large hat, and it quickly becomes nearly impossible to navigate Sixth Street without getting banged in the head by a bass or aurally accosted by someone’s experimental reggae band. It’s… weird, but it’s also an obvious indicator that Film is over (until next year!) and that it’s time to take stock of everything that happened over the previous few days (perhaps with the added benefit of a BBQ-centric meal).
With SXSW effectively over for the film crowd, non-SXSW attendees can finally slough off their collective jealousy and look forward to a mess of movies hitting the big screen soon (or, at least, soon enough).
Every year, SXSW premieres a slew of studio films that already have both distribution and set release dates, including the extremely well-regarded Ex Machina (April 10), the apparently quite funny Spy (June 5), the already beloved Trainwreck (the film screened as a work-in-progress at the fest, and will arrive in theaters on July 17), the surprise screening Furious 7 (April 3), and the not-exactly-adored Get Hard (March 27).
A number of other films have already been picked up for future distribution, including weed doc Rolling Papers (bought by Alchemy); Hannah Fidell’s 6 Years (grabbed by Netflix, with a planned premiere later this year); Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 follow-up, The Nightmare (purchased by Gravitas Ventures for release on June 5); the Duplass brothers-produced Mansion Family Vacation (Netflix); the Rupert Grint-starring Moonwalkers (Alchemy); and Alex Gibney’s doc Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine (Magnolia).
The festival also boasts a number of award-winners that should excite forward-leaning film fans, from Narrative Feature Competition Grand Jury winner Krisha, Documentary Feature Competition Grand Jury winner Peace Officer, the SXSW Gamechanger Award winner Free Entry, and the Louis Black “Lone Star” Award winner Western. All four big winners are in need of distribution, so get on that, film distributors!
(And, not to put a pin in the excitement of winning an award, but in the spirit of painting a true picture of the distribution world: Last year’s Narrative winner, Fort Tilden—which, for the record, our woman-on-the-ground Genevieve Koski did not care for—was just picked up for U.S. distribution this week. It’s tough out there, even for winners.)