After premiering at Sundance earlier this year, Twinless is about to hit theaters across the country — though some of the film already made its way online months ago.
Twinless — which follows two young men who have lost their respective twin brothers and develop a friendship after meeting in a support group — was pulled from Sundance’s online screening portal in January after clips from the movie surfaced on social media platforms. O’Brien became a trending topic on X (formerly Twitter) for one clip in particular, a sex scene that is a spoiler to the twisty storyline.
Months later, at the movie’s Los Angeles premiere on Tuesday, O’Brien told The Hollywood Reporter of the leaks, “That sucked. I don’t know, it’s nice to finally have the movie out in the world — but stop doing that, it affects us.”
Writer, director and fellow star James Sweeney added, “It was really demoralizing and uncomfortable. The entitlement that people have to put things on the internet when they’re not released and not ready for consumption — that’s not how I wanted the film to be introduced. Obviously we hope that it’s a net positive that it invigorates interest and try to look at the bright side that way, but I can’t really personally condone piracy.”
Sweeney was inspired to write the film after a longtime fascination with twins, having grown up, as he put it, “in the era of the Olsens, Sister Sister, The Parent Trap — that’s actually not a real twin. And then I dated an identical twin, and I wrote the first draft after he broke up with me.”
O’Brien said the script was “quite succinctly the best thing I had read in so long and really remained that for the four years I was attached to it. We were trying to get it off the ground and I thought it was really special and was a little confused how it ended up near me.”
The film also marks the actor’s first executive producer credit, which O’Brien said “means a lot. This one was definitely one of the closest things I’ve ever held in a professional way and being a part of it for so long — I’d never been so from the ground up with something.” But watching Sweeney wear so many hats didn’t motivate O’Brien to write or direct himself, as he joked, “Watching him do it you go, ‘That’s just so many emails.’”
Twinless arrives in theaters on Friday.