The director of 2018’s Sorry To Bother You – Boots Riley – is finally getting his next film up and running with Neon backing the project.
If you saw Sorry To Bother You in cinemas back in 2018, whether you loved it or hated it, there was no arguing that the film heralded the arrival of a filmmaker with ideas.
It was one of this writer’s favourite films of the year, attacking corporate-driven American culture through clever satire, compelling weirdness and unbridled creativity. I dug into the sheer design of the film in fact back in 2020, right here.
Boots Riley was the filmmaker behind Sorry To Bother You and in the years since, we haven’t seen a cinematic follow-up from him. Riley did create the Amazon series, I Am Virgo. That was another big creative swing, although for this writer at least, perhaps a switch to longer-form storytelling lost some of the fizz that Sorry To Bother You possessed.
Happily, Riley’s next project is a film, and what’s more, it’s set to shoot this spring.
Neon is backing the project which revolves around a ‘revolves around a ring of female shoplifters’. That’s all we know for now. No other plot details or casting have been announced as of yet. The New York Times’ Kyle Buchanan broke the story on social media and you can see his post here.
Still, we’re just happy to see that Riley is getting another film project up and running.
Sorry To Bother You marked him out as one of the most promising artists to emerge from the US independent landscape. Hopefully this next project will see him continue to deliver on that promise. We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it, although Riley and his crew will have to get their skates on if they want a release for the end of this year. Entirely possible, of course, but for the minute, no news of a release date…
Read more: Exploring the design of Sorry To Bother You