Shia LaBeouf meets Mark Twain in the rousing trailer for SXSW breakout The Peanut Butter Falcon

Shia LaBeouf meets Mark Twain in the rousing trailer for SXSW breakout The Peanut Butter Falcon
Screenshot: The Peanut Butter Falcon

One of the most rousing films to emerge from this year’s SXSW Film Festival was The Peanut Butter Falcon, a sun-baked riff on Huckleberry Finn that populates its swampy Southern milieu with washed-up professional wrestlers, blind preachers, and murderous crabbers. Today, the feature debut of filmmakers Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz got its first trailer.

Per Deadline, the film was built around star Zack Gottsagen, a performer with Down’s Syndrome who Nilson and Schwartz first met at a camp for disabled actors. In it, Gottsagen’s character escapes from his care facility to navigate the intracoastal Southeast to attend a wrestling school. Along the way, he meets Shia LaBeouf’s Tyler, a depressed, self-destructive fisherman in desperate need of redemption. The impressive supporting cast includes Dakota Johnson, Bruce Dern, Thomas Haden Church, John Hawkes, and believe it or not, actual wrestlers Mick Foley and Jake “The Snake” Roberts, the latter of whom gives a hilariously deadpan performance.

Watch the trailer below.

 
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