Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg Spent Two Hours Transforming Into Bigfoot With ‘Tons of Fur’ for Absurdist Sundance Movie ‘Sasquatch Sunset’

Kieran Culkin is opening up about what was happening with Jesse Eisenberg at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival!

Pending Woody Allen’s final and absolute cancellation, few directors have emerged to take his place as an erudite and literary artist whose work combines snappy wordplay, base sex jokes and a philosophical willingness to stare into the abyss. Jesse Eisenberg staked a tentative claim to that throne with his 2022 debut When You Finish Saving the World, an amiable but scrappy political satire about a left-wing mother and son, but his follow-up makes a stronger case, being much more adult, less broadly scripted, and as depressing as Woody Allen circa Stardust Memories (which his sophomore film as director obliquely resembles, with its talk of chance, fate and irony).

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has just closed a deal in the $17 million range for worldwide rights to It’s What’s Inside, the thriller written and directed by Greg Jardin that has been one of the Sundance Film Festival’s buzziest titles. It’s the second 8-figure deal of Sundance, after the Jesse Eisenberg-directed A Real Pain sold to Searchlight for $10 million.

Berlin Film Festival is unveiling its full competition lineup. Berlin’s previously announced opener is Ireland-set drama “Small Things Like These” starring “Oppenheimer’s” Cillian Murphy and directed by Tim Mielants (“Peaky Blinders”).

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic More actors than ever are now stepping behind the camera to take a shot at directing. To me, they always end up falling into one of three categories. There are the ones who simply aren’t very good at it.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain,” one of the buzziest movies to premiere so far at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, has sold to Searchlight in a huge $10 million deal. Given the warm reception in Park City, the film sparked a bidding war among several distributions to land global rights. Eisenberg directed “A Real Pain” in addition to starring alongside Kieran Culkin.

EXCLUSIVE: The dealmaking has begun. Searchlight Pictures closed the first major deal on the ground at the Sundance Film Festival — $10 million for WW rights for A Real Pain, directed and written by Jesse Eisenberg. He stars with freshly minted Emmy winning Succession star Kieran Culkin as mismatched cousins David and Benji. They reunite for a tour of Poland to honor their grandmother, but older tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family’s history. The film will get a big theatrical release later this year.

Jesse Eisenberg brought the villain Lex Luthor to life in the DC film universe, and the role has been passed off to Nicholas Hoult.

PARK CITY – There are multiple meanings to the title of Jesse Eisenberg’s latest directorial effort, “A Real Pain.” There is the pain that cousins Benji Kaplan (Eisenberg) and David Kaplan (Keiran Culkin) are experiencing over the passing of their beloved grandmother and there is the pain Benji is feeling over a horrifying incident in his cousin’s life. The most pressing example, however, is in David’s soul.

Stephen Rodrick Jesse Eisenberg‘s “A Real Pain” stars Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as mismatched New York Jewish cousins. They’re on a trip to Poland in search of the life that their recently dead grandmother lived before the Holocaust. Benji is a buttoned up neurotic on OCD medicine while David is a charming fuckup with no prospects but a mouth that is equally hilarious and malignantly obnoxious.

There’s commitment to the bit, and then there’s David and Nathan Zellner. The brothers’ latest film “Sasquatch Sunset,” billed to Sundance audiences as only “a year in the life of a singular family,” makes good on the filmmaking duo’s long desire to make a film about the legend of Bigfoot.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Austin-based indie directors David and Nathan Zellner have spent more time thinking about Sasquatch than most filmmakers do musing about human beings. In 2011, they brought “Sasquatch Birth Journal 2” to the Sundance Film Festival, a four-minute faux nature documentary in which a hirsute creature can be seen giving birth to an equally furry infant.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Sasquatch Sunset” is the kind of movie you need to see to believe. Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough star in the absurdist comedy, which premiered on Friday at the Sundance Film Festival and follows a family of Yetis over the course of a year. The film, with zero dialogue or narration but plenty of grunts, captures an immersive, “true” depiction of the daily life of the Sasquatch.

Anyone with more than a passing interest in the weird and wonderful will have seen, if not heard of, the Patterson-Gimlin footage, the cryptoozological equivalent of the Zapruder film. Shot in 1967 in the forests of Northern Carolina, it purports to show a large, ape-like creature with an elongated forehead striding purposefully into the trees. Unlike an ape, the creature walks upright, and, unlike the furtive behavior of any other forest creature, it has the casual air of the average human being popping over to the 7-11 to pick up a gallon of milk. Most people who see the footage wonder what the hell this damn thing is, but the sibling directors of Sasquatch Sunset have a couple more questions that they’d like answered. Like, where is it going? And what does it do all day?

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jesse Eisenberg is officially giving his Lex Luthor advice to Nicholas Hoult, and it’s blunt: “Don’t watch me!” During an interview at the Variety Studio presented by Audible while attending the Sundance Film Festival, Eisenberg suggested Hoult should forge his own path and not pay attention to Eisenberg’s own work as Lex Luthor in Zack Snyder’s DC Universe. “Whenever you play a role you feel connected to it,” Eisenberg added to Variety‘s Matt Donnelly about playing the DC villain for a short time.

EXCLUSIVE. When the alternative book of film trivia is written, a page will be dedicated to the influence of Leonard Nimoy’s paranormal-themed late-’70s TV show In Search of… on director siblings. It was here that Albert and Allen Hughes first heard about Britain’s most notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper, beginning an obsession with Victorian London that resulted in their 2001 horror-drama From Hell. And for David and Nathan Zellner, the cultural impact was very similar. “We loved that show,” recalls David. “As kids, there wasn’t much out there, that we were exposed to, that covered those sorts of things. They’d cover the Loch Ness monster, everything. I remember one about plants, wondering if they were able to think and what kind of music they’d like to listen to. They got really obscure with some of the subjects, but we loved that show. We loved the vibe of it. And that’s where we first learned about Bigfoot…”

William Earl Variety is returning to the Sundance Film Festival this year with its annual Interview Studio, presented by Audible, the leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling. Throughout the festival, videos from the interview studio will be distributed across Variety.com as well as Variety and Audible’s social media channels (Instagram: @audible, @Variety; Twitter: @audible_com, @Variety; TikTok: @audible, @VarietyMagazine).

Daisy Jones & The Six band were set to perform live shows before the writer’s strike.Keough took to her official Instagram account to share a clip of her and her fellow castmate Sam Claflin – who portrayed the role of Billy Dune in the series – at band practice singing a live version of ‘Look At Us Now (Honeycomb)’ from the show.“In honor of the Emmys, here’s a video of the last time Sammy, the band and I rehearsed together. We were rehearsing to perform live for our lovely Daisy fans and it sadly never happened because of the strike,” began the caption on the post.A post shared by Riley Keough (@rileykeough)She continued: “I have so much love for everyone in this band and on this show.

Jaden Thompson Ali Wong has won the Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a limited or anthology series or movie for her role in the Netflix series “Beef.” Wong stars as a business owner who gets into a road rage incident with a stranger, played by fellow Emmy winner Steven Yeun. Wong beat out fellow nominees Lizzy Caplan (“Fleishman is in Trouble”), Jessica Chastain (“George and Tammy”), Dominique Fishback (“Swarm”), Kathryn Hahn (“Tiny Beautiful Things”) and Riley Keough (“Daisy Jones and the Six”). “I wouldnt’ be standing here without my parents, my amazing parents, my mother and my father who I so wish was alive to share this moment with me,” Wong said while accepting her award.

Emmys 2024 red carpet after a tense legal battleover Lisa Marie Presley’s estate. Keough, 34, donned ablack Chanel gown while Priscilla, 78, also dressed in black with her signature red hair and red lip. Their public reunion comes days after the first anniversary of Lisa Marie’s death on Jan.