Robert Pattinson #Damsel to Premiere at Sundance Film Festival on 23 January 2018

Damsel will premiere at 3.30pm on 23 January 2018 at the Eccles Theatre and will have a further 3 screenings as follows:

• 24 January 2018 at 9.00am at Library Centre Theatre (Press & Industry Screening)
• 27 January 2018 at 9.30pm at The Ray Theatre (Park City)
• 28 January 2018 at 12.30pm at Rose Wagner Center (Salt Lake City)

 

Sundance PDF Schedule

Ticket information HERE

Photo credit:  Adam Stone – Courtesy of Sundance Institute

*****UPDATED:  14 December 2017******

Sundance has added a Damsel page to their website and gives us a better synopsis:

It’s a classic tale of the Old West: Samuel Alabaster is a man searching for his true love. Parson Henry is another, much drunker man, searching for a new start. Penelope is a woman who’s not particularly interested in being found. And Rufus Cornell is just a mean bastard with a taste for buckskin. There’s rotgut, rawhide, rootin’, tootin’, and hootin’. Plus, a little tiny horse.

Damsel finds Sundance Film Festival stalwarts David and Nathan Zellner (Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter) reinventing a dusty genre and wearing many hats, several of which are quite silly. The brothers write, produce, and direct the film, while also starring alongside Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, and Robert Forster. The Zellners’ off-kilter enthusiasm must be infectious, as the whole cast joyfully embraces the loopy rhythms and bonkers logic of this unfamiliar frontier.

So saddle up and prepare to git along—just don’t be surprised if you end up somewheres you never expected.

Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska #Damsel to World Premiere at Sundance 2018

It hasn’t even been 36 hours since I tweeted that I was looking forward to meeting Samuel and well – here he is!  Damsel will have its world premiere at Sundance (like we suspected).  From ScreenDaily:

In a break from tradition, Sundance director John Cooper and his team unveiled the entire features roster on Wednesday (November 29) encompassing US and World dramatic and documentaries, Premieres, Documentary Premieres, Midnight, NEXT, Spotlight and Kids. …

…

PREMIERES

A showcase of world premieres of some of the most highly anticipated narrative films of the coming year. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include The Big Sick, Call Me By Your Name, Boyhood and Mudbound.

All selections are world premieres and US nationality unless stated otherwise. All synopses provided by the festival.

….

Damsel

David Zellner, Nathan Zellner
Samuel Alabaster, an affluent pioneer, ventures across the American Frontier to marry the love of his life, Penelope. As Samuel, a drunkard named Parson Henry and a miniature horse called Butterscotch traverse the Wild West, their once-simple journey grows treacherous, blurring the lines between hero, villain and damsel.
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, David Zellner, Robert Forster, Nathan Zellner, Joe Billingiere.

HQ Still via

Robert Pattinson talks about upcoming projects, directors and more with IndieWire

 

Rob sure does like working with “Mia’s”.  Also, I’m probably in the minority but I am still holding out hope for “Idol’s Eye”.  Indiewire spoke to Rob whilst he was at the Savannah Film Festival for the Maverick Award and had some insight from Rob in relation to this upcoming films and collaborations. I noticed he didn’t mention Joanna Hogg, but I’m with Rob about hoping “The Devil All The Time” happens because it’s one of my favourite reads this year – quirky fabulous book:

Clair Denis’ Sci-Fi Project “High Life”: “It’s definitely nuts,” said Pattinson. “I just finished it last week. [Denis] is incredible. I’m not just saying that, she’s like one of the most fascinating people to work for. I was saying to her at the end of the shoot, she’s the most authentic punk that I’ve even met in my life. Just someone who can control a set. She’s so tiny, and to me she’s the most definitive auteur I’ve ever worked with as well. There’s disparate elements of the [‘High Life’] story. It’s just all over the place and I can’t waiting to see how she finds the throughline of everything, because it’s insane.”

The Zellner Brothers’ “Damsel”: “It’s got that same kind of ‘Kumiko [the Treasure Hunter]’ tone. It’s a funny movie I think, well I hope, I haven’t seen the final movie. I thought the script was very funny. It’s a very, very odd – ostensibly a western, but it’s like a feminist western comedy.”

Antonio Campos’ “The Devil All the Time”: “It’s got a really fun part in it. I hope it’s going to happen, I think it will. I love Antonio, I’m sort of friends with him as well and I think Mia Goth [“Cure for Wellness,” “Nymphomaniac”] will be in it, and she’s excited about it as well.”

Olivier Assayas’ heist film “Idol’s Eye”: “Every few months it kind of reappears again, but I think it’s happening with [Sylvester] Stallone, which is cool. I’m still always talking to them and seeing what’s going to happen, but I love Olivier.

Ciro Guerra’s “Waiting For the Barbarians”: “I saw ‘Embrace the Serpent’ that last day it played at the Sunshine in New York and the matinee was packed. I just knew Ciro Guerra’s next film was going to be amazing. I’m going to do ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ with Mark Rylance.”

Robert Pattinson #Damsel making Sundance 2018 Wish Lists

 

As we head towards the end of 2017, predictions for what films may make Sundance Film Festival seem to surface around now.  I tweeted last week Ioncinema was hoping to see Damsel at Sundance.  If you missed the tweet, here’s what Ioncinema predicted and why:

We incorrectly labeled this guesstimate as dropping in 2017 and to be frank, we’re a bit surprised that it didn’t shore up at the Venice Film Festival apres Robert Pattinson (a significant go to player for the more difficult Euro-centric and American indie material) went to Cannes with Safdie Bros. Good Time. This only confirms that the film might have gone through a more arduous post-production phase than their Sundance preem Goliath (2008), Kid-Thing (2012) and Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter combined, or perhaps producers felt a Sundance preem might help better position the film for the market. Aside from some creative credits being clarified, very little in terms of updates have been offered on David and Nathan Zellner’s Damsel. Shot in Utah/Oregon back in August of 2016, Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, Joseph Billingiere and the bros. are credited as the film’s top players. Tonally, we expect this western to feature a certain level of absurdity, and the look and setting to be memorable one with some choice folks in the creative departments: in cinematographer Adam Stone (Loving) and production designer Scott Kuzio (David Lowery’s Old Man and the Gun).

Gist: Written by the Zellner bros., this is about a businessman (Pattinson) who travels West to join his fiancée (Wasikowska) in the mountains.

Indiewire is also hoping to see Damsel at Sundance:

“Damsels”
Directors: David and Nathan Zellner
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska

Why We Hope It Heads to Park City: Austin-based sibling directors the Zellner brothers have slowly made their way beyond their insular local community, where they’ve been making eccentric shorts and outré features for years. “Kid-Thing” was a cult hit in the Sundance NEXT category, while their surreal drama “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” wowed competition and found some modicum of commercial success (bolstering the Team Bunzo meme in the process). Now they’re back with another idiosyncratic project produced on a somewhat larger scale, teaming with a post-“Good Time” Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska for the story of a businessman who travels to Utah to join his fiancé in the mountains. Pattinson has called the project “a slapstick comedy,” but the Zellners’ comedy is always a bit skewed, so expect something unpredictable. At Sundance, different is always welcome. —EK

Eric you’re not alone in hoping that it heads to Park City.  If it does, then hopefully we may see a teaser trailer before the year is out.

Damsel – a western starring Robert Pattinson – premiering in 2018

 

I guess the possibility of Sundance is a reality.  The Playground UK recently spoke with Josh Lambert from The Octopus Project who shared where Damsel is at:

What does the future hold for The Octopus Project?

We’re super excited about the future!  We’re just now finishing up the score to the next Zellner Bros. film – Damsel (a western starring Robert Pattinson!) – which premieres next year, this last weekend, we played an ambient, improvised, quadrophonic live A/V show, which we’re hoping to continue tinkering with for future endeavors, we have a special release/tour happening early in 2018 & we’re working on European dates for next year.  Non-stop! [My emphasis]

Josh also gave a glimpse of how they work with the Zellner Bros:

The Octopus Project supplied the score to the 2014 film Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, directed by David Zellner. Could you tell us how this came about, and what it may have taught you as a band?

We’ve been buddies with David and Nathan Zellner for a long time.  They’ve made music videos for us & we’ve supplied music for some of their short films & features.  We had been talking with them for a few years about scoring what became Kumiko – passing musical references back and forth/talking about the script/etc.  So, when it came time to make the film, we were all on the same page.

We learned a lot on that film in the sense that a little goes a long way.  As a rock band, we generally throw everything into our songs, which makes things super dense.  I love that approach, but for a film like Kumiko, you have to head in the opposite direction.  The whole film is from the perspective of Kumiko, so it’s more about getting into her head than being bombastic.

Click on the link to read their full interview and have a listen to their sound, if you haven’t had a chance to do so already.

Robert Pattinson will play “Samuel” Zellner Bros #Damsel

 

IMDbPro finally updated the character names of some of the cast – Samuel can’t wait to meet you: