Sundance hit Magazine Dreams, starring Jonathan Majors in a jaw-dropping role, has a release date now.
The award-winning film, which was acquired by Searchlight Pictures and will come to theaters Dec. 8, which is a prime awards season release date.
Searchlight garnered the rights for the Elijah Bynum-directed film after a heavy battle between HBO, Neon and Sony Pictures Classics.
Also starring Taylour Paige and Haley Bennett, Magazine Dreams follows a man who strives to become a bodybuilder amid his own personal struggles. According to the film’s description as written by Shadow and Act Managing Editor Trey Mangum:
It centers on Majors’ Killian Maddox, a man with dreams of becoming a famous bodybuilder who struggles to control his temper and keep his life together while maintaining this ambition amid court-mandated therapy, working at the local grocery store and caring for his grandfather. Tackling toxic masculinity, mental health and societal expectations, the film pulls no punches.
Bynum spoke at the Sundance premiere about how he wanted to take on a character who had a “severe intensity” to him.
“He was very much a character who was in search of a story and I hadn’t found a story for him yet. And it was [during] a period of time in which I was trying to get back into shape and going to the gym,” he said. “And I would see this guy come in every day and was clearly a bodybuilder. He had this severe intensity to him because he seemed to be in quite a bit of physical pain, spiritual pain and emotional pain. Everyone in the gym around seemed to look the other way and pretend he wasn’t there. And I thought [he’d be] an interesting character…and what a peculiar way to move through the world when you’re both feared and ignored at the same time. That was really the first idea to pop in my mind and the more I thought about this man, who I don’t know at all, he seemed to be someone with a fragile delicate soul.”