Hypnotic: Robert Rodriguez, Ben Affleck thriller secures U.S. distribution

Director Robert Rodriguez‘s action thriller Hypnotic, which stars Ben Affleck, will be screening for potential international distributors at the European Film Market at the end of this week, but a few days before that screening is held Deadline reports that the movie has secured a U.S. distribution deal… and the plan is for Hypnotic to get a theatrical release sometime this summer.

Hypnotic has had a bumpy ride on its way to this distribution deal. When the $65 million movie was heading into production in late 2021, it was the flagship project for mini-studio Solstice, which was the main financier and was going to be the U.S. distributor. But when Hypnotic finally got rolling after waiting through multiple delays, Solstice imploded and the movie was left without a U.S. distributor. Quite a blow for the international investors who had been promised Hypnotic would get a 2000 screen theatrical release in the U.S. (and for Peacock, which made an eight figure deal to acquire the domestic pay TV rights). The pressure was on for the producers to find another distributor who would give the movie as wide of a release as Solstice had been planning. Because, as one source told Deadline, “They better get a 2000 screen commitment, otherwise all their deals will fall apart.”

But now a distribution deal has been made. With Ketchup Entertainment, a company that hasn’t released a film in the U.S. since Captain Sabertooth and the Magic Diamond in 2019. It has never released a movie as expensive as Hypnotic, and has never had a release as wide as this one will be. But the company’s CEO Gareth West is an executive producer on Hypnotic and helped set up the financing for Solstice. So now the plan is for Ketchup Entertainment to give Hypnotic a 2000 screen release “in coordination with a number of former Solstice executives”.

Scripted by Rodriguez (Machete) and Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island), Hypnotic sees Affleck taking on the role of a detective who becomes entangled in a mystery involving his missing daughter and a secret government program, while investigating a string of impossible high-end heists. 

Affleck is joined in the cast by Alice Braga and Hala Finley.

Rodriguez has described Hypnotic as “a Hitchcock thriller on steroids… It’s that kind of a movie. A lot of twists, a lot of turns. Very exciting. It’s one of my favorite stories. I started writing it back in 2002. So it’s one of the ones I’ve had the longest that I’ve been wanting to do.”

Here’s hoping that Hypnotic‘s theatrical release will go well… and that, after all the trouble, the movie has turned out to be good and entertaining.

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