School of Hard Knocks: Felix Thompson’s “King Jack” Bullied By Well Go USA

Less than a day after winning the Independent Spirit Awards’ “Someone to Watch” to watch award beating out Chloé Zhao’s Sundance preemed Songs My Brothers Taught Me and Robert Machoian & Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck SXSW preemed God Bless the Child, Felix Thompson sees his feature debut find a home with the Well Go USA folks – who nabbed the North American, Australian and New Zealand distribution rights. The Wrap reports that the pic starring Charlie Plummer, Cory Nichols and Christian Madsen, King Jack had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Fest and will be released sometime this summer.

Gist: A tough but tender coming-of-age story about friendship and finding happiness in rough surroundings, “King Jack” follows a scrappy 15-year-old named Jack (Plummer) as he battles the torments of a violent older bully and faces another round of summer school. Jack already has more problems than he can handle, so when his ailing aunt sticks him with his runty younger cousin (Nichols) over the weekend, the last thing Jack wants to do is look after him. Unfortunately, no one’s ever really cared about what Jack wants.

Worth Noting: King Jack won the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Fest.

Do We Care?: In its review of the film, Variety’s Guy Lodge claims that it “bears the whispery influence of such American mood merchants as David Gordon Green and David Robert Mitchell.” We have this on our radar.