The prolific indie director Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies) has mostly shied away from direct conflict in his films, which makes the upcoming Win It All seem like a comparatively risky change of pace. It’s the story of a compulsive gambler (Jake Johnson, a Swanberg regular) who is asked to hide a duffel bag of money for a criminal acquaintance and ends up blowing it on bets. And while it seems to be set in Swanberg’s regular milieu (i.e. the north side of Chicago) and was shot in his preferred format of Super 16mm by Easy cinematographer Eon Mora, the trailer doesn’t completely look like a Joe Swanberg movie, either. It’s a little dingier, a little more adventurous in the lighting.
Win It All was actually shot in the summer of 2015, and despite being rumored as a possible pick for Sundance for two years in a row, it seems to have spent the time in distribution limbo. Netflix—which also produces Easy, Swanberg’s quasi-anthology series—will be releasing the film directly to its streaming platform on April 7. The supporting cast includes Keegan-Michael Key, Aislinn Derbez, and Joe Lo Truglio, while the score is by occasional Swanberg collaborator Dan Romer, best known for the music for Beasts Of The Southern Wild.