{"id":255774,"date":"2026-01-24T18:44:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T18:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/255774\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T18:44:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T18:44:14","slug":"dave-franco-and-oshea-jackson-jr-lead-road-movie-gone-wrong-bringing-comedy-to-sundance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/255774\/","title":{"rendered":"Dave Franco and O\u2019Shea Jackson Jr. lead road movie gone wrong, bringing comedy to Sundance"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARK CITY, Utah — PARK CITY, Utah (AP) \u2014 Sundance movies<\/a> might have a reputation for leaning into serious dramas, but this year the independent film festival has a slew of comedies on the slate<\/a>, from quirky documentaries to more raucous fare.<\/p>\n

One of the latter comes from filmmaker Macon Blair, a Sundance veteran and grand jury prize winner for \u201cI Don\u2019t Feel at Home in This World Anymore,\u201d whose new movie might best be described as a road movie gone wrong.<\/p>\n

Dave Franco<\/a> and O\u2019Shea Jackson Jr. play two down on their luck guys and general screwups who are hired to transport a troubled teen (Mason Thames) to a treatment facility in \u201cThe S—heads,\u201d which had its world premiere in Park City, Utah Friday night. It\u2019s one of the films looking for distribution at the indie film festival.<\/p>\n

Blair and Alex Orr started working on the script over 10 years ago. It almost got made in 2017, but financing fell apart when they were in pre-production.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver time it got a little darker, a little seedier, a little angrier. It\u2019s still a comedy, it\u2019s still meant to be fun and breezy and a good time,\u201d Blair said. \u201cBut there was a current of something that became a little more pronounced.\u201d<\/p>\n

When they decided to try again, Franco was the one who helped get it across the finish line, joining as a producer, finding the money and suggesting Jackson and Thames for their roles. Blair loved watching Franco work, in particular.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single thing he does, you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh that could go in the movie,\u2019\u201d Blair said. \u201cHe\u2019s so prepared, so dialed in. It was impressive to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film also features surprising supporting performances by Kiernan Shipka and Peter Dinklage, who Blair became friends with after getting a beer at Sundance not too long ago. His hope is to find a distributor who might be open to a theatrical release, citing a movie like \u201cFriendship<\/a> ” as an example of a more unconventional movie that audiences turned out for.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope someone gets the vibe of the movie on its own terms,\u201d Blair said. \u201cYou don\u2019t name a movie this because you want it to be a Merchant Ivory thing.<\/a> But there\u2019s other things in it. I think about O\u2019Shea\u2019s performance and how vulnerable he gets in this. I\u2019m hoping people laugh, I\u2019m hoping people have a good time. But I\u2019m also hoping people see that he\u2019s a great actor too.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

For more coverage of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, visit: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/sundance-film-festival<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARK CITY, Utah — PARK CITY, Utah (AP) \u2014 Sundance movies might have a reputation for leaning into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[135608,127,884,146,85,46,397,48764],"class_list":{"0":"post-255774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-135608","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-comedy","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-sundance-film-festival"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}