Zachary Gottsagen and Shia LaBeouf star in the official trailer for the SXSW breakout hit, The Peanut Butter Falcon. Written and directed by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz (making their non-documentary feature debut), the indie adventure follows Zak (Gottsagen), a young man with Down syndrome who flees his residential nursing home in an effort to realize his dreams and attend the same wrestling school as his idol, aka. The Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church). Along the way, he crosses paths with Tyler (Shia LaBeouf), an outlaw on the run who agrees to help Zak and ends up becoming his mentor along the way.
The Peanut Butter Falcon was largely well-received upon its premiere at SXSW in March, with critics heralding the film as a funny and touching Mark Twain-esque adventure about a pair of unexpected friends who undertake a strange little odyssey of their own in the Deep South. Roadside Attractions was quick to pick up the movie after that and set it to release this summer on August 9. There, it will serve as counter-programming to the numerous studio offerings – ranging from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark to Dora and the Lost City of Gold – slated to arrive that weekend.
Roadside is getting the ball rolling on marketing ahead of then, and has now dropped the official Peanut Butter Falcon trailer online. You can check it out in the space below.
Naturally, The Peanut Butter Falcon trailer takes advantage of the early buzz around the movie and features several pull-quotes from the SXSW reviews that sing its praises. The actual film seems pretty heartfelt and funny based on the footage included here, and it’s definitely nice to see that Zak is not only portrayed by an actor with Down syndrome, but is also – by the look of things – a full-realized and compelling character in his own right. It’s a welcome bit of representation in a dramedy that otherwise promises to make good use of a talented cast of character actors that, as seen here, includes Dakota Johnson as Eleanor – the nursing home employee tasked who tries to bring Zak back before helping him instead – and people like Church, Bruce Dern, and John Hawkes in key supporting roles.
As for LaBeouf: The Peanut Butter Falcon is one of two films he’s got coming out in the second half of 2019 that’ve been generating positive buzz on the festival circuit. The other movie in question is Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy, a semi-autobiographical drama that LaBeouf wrote based on his own childhood and relationship with his father (whom the actor actually portrays in the film). LaBeouf even wrote Honey Boy as part of the rehabilitation program that he entered following his personal and public struggles in recent years, and it’s great to see him now recovering and working on unique projects like Har’el’s film and The Peanut Butter Falcon.
