Christine Vachon, the prolific independent producer whose Killer Films has backed Happiness, Boys Don’t Cry, Carol and more recently Past Lives, May December and Materialists, said at the Edinburgh Film Festival on Friday that Pedro Pascal is “a revelation” in Todd Haynes’ re-worked gay romance movie.

De Noche, currently in post-production with no release date announced yet, was set to star Joaquin Phoenix before he abruptly pulled out before the shoot began. Vachon previously called the situation “a tragedy” and explained in an industry talk at Edinburgh how she and her long-time collaborator Haynes managed to rebuild the project after Phoenix’s exit.

Host Wendy Mitchell joked: “I actually like [Pascal] better than Joaquin Phoenix anyway,” to which Vachon responded: “I kind of do too!” The tightly-packed crowd at Edinburgh’s Central Hall laughed with them.

Vachon continued: “It wasn’t an easy situation. And as I also stated, it was devastating that Todd didn’t get to make a movie again that year. If you take the […] glass half-full version, and ‘everything happens for a reason’ [perspective], maybe the reason was that this was a role that Pedro was born to play. He is certainly extraordinary in the film, and by the way, so is Danny [Ramirez]. I mean, both of them are a revelation.”

Getting a “do-over” allowed them to find a better shoot location, said Vachon, which showed her everything worked out for the best. Pascal was brought on board via her work with him on Celine Song’s Materialists. “People always say to me, ‘Is he as nice as he seems?’ […] He is. People are so invested. They love him.”

As a titan of independent film production, Vachon — in Edinburgh with her latest film Pretty Babies, directed by Tyler-Marie Evans, who spoke to THR in depth about winning over Vachon just this week — was also probed on the box office success of Obsession and Backrooms this year, two movies that have challenged the status quo in Hollywood. “I do,” she said when asked if she likes the energy coming out of YouTube. “But when we were making movies like Poison [and] Go Fish, we also identified an audience… Back in those days, the LGBTQ audience could go to bars. There were parts of town [where you] could take your leaflets and just go specific places where people gathered and say, ‘Look! We made this! It’s for you.’ That’s just moved online.”

Vachon is extremely buoyed by the current theater-going demographic being made up, predominantly, of people aged under 30. She cannot deny, however, that “we’re at a time of great disruption,” and the queer film landscape is a little rocky with so much division in the U.S. at the moment. “It’s a conundrum right now. We have something like Heated Rivalry which couldn’t be a bigger hit, and we still have politicians campaigning on who gets to use what bathroom. And it’s happening [in the U.K.] too. It’s not like we have the monopoly on [marginalizing] LGBTQ people.”

“I remember when I would go see screenings of Poison or Swoon, which were boy queer [films] and [the theater] would be filled with lesbians because they were like, ‘I guess I’ll go see this.’ But now there is more choice,” she continued. “And the power of narrative to actually change people’s perspectives is stronger than it’s ever been.”

On the toss-up of a box office hit or flop, Vachon confessed she can’t predict the commercial outcome of her movies. She’s actually pleased streaming services can get movies to wider audiences nowadays. “When Todd Haynes’ Safe came out, it didn’t do anything at the box office. People weren’t interested in seeing it. The reviews were a little head-scratchy, like, ‘Not quite sure what he was going for here.’ But in the mid-late ’90s, I can’t remember exactly when, a newspaper [called] the Village Voice, which was incredibly influential at the time, did a survey of every single movie critic in America. What was the best movie in the ’90s? Safe was number one.”

“Sometimes the answer is that people just didn’t want to see it. They just didn’t, and you can’t really put your finger on why it didn’t hit the zeitgeist in that way. Who knows why? It was either too late or too soon. And now, the good thing in my mind [is] we have access to things and [movies] can find their way later. People can discover movies [from] another time.”

Mitchell asked Vachon at the end of the session: “Do you use AI?”

Vachon replied: “Yes,” explaining that she often uses it for synopses — to spare a busy intern from doing the job — or getting restaurant recommendations, such as when she was at the “very expensive” Venice Film Festival with last year’s Late Fame and needed a cheap, nearby spot.

The 2026 Edinburgh International Film Festival runs Aug. 13-19.

Editor’s note: This review was originally published during the 2025 SXSW Film and TV Festival. Black Bear releases the film theatrically starting Friday, August 14.

Though he’s in less than half of Andrew Patterson’s Oklahoma Western “The Rivals of Amziah King,” Matthew McConaughey looms over the film like a myth in human form. His role as the title character, a mandolin-playing beekeeper out of Oklahoma, is also the twangy Oscar winner’s first screen role in six years. And it’s a testament to how mythic McConaughey himself is, and how much we take the Texan’s presence as granted and a given, that his absence from our movies and television didn’t register at all. He, like Amziah, looms regardless.

Oklahoma writer/director Patterson pays homage to his roots — and the people who laid their foundation — in his high-spirited, energetic follow-up to the 2019 Slamdance winner “The Vast of Night.” Where that 1950s-set UFO chiller blended “The X-Files,” B movies, and classic radio dramas, “The Rivals of Amziah King” cross-pollinates a bluegrass musical, beekeeping drama, a Native American Western, and a winding Mark Twain journey up a river, and a narrative that lustily taps its feet on the knife’s edge of twee and earnest.

But there’s enough crowdpleasing spark to cut through the over-direction — at times, Amziah’s bluegrass band, led by Owen Teague in a wordless performance, is cut and assembled more like a music video than a movie, Patterson slowing down, freezing, and accelerating frames at a whiplashed frenzy. Yet vistas of the Oklahoma landscape, and Patterson’s tenderness for the Choctaw Nation in the former of a former foster child named Ketari (newcomer Angelina LookingGlass), indicate a filmmaker with a no-doubt strong vision, each take (and there are many) embodying a sense of having been precisely storyboarded and choreographed.

Patterson re-teams with cinematographer M.I. Littin-Menz who, on “The Vast of Night,” sent us hurtling through the night sky and the insides of a switchboard all the way onto the court of a high school basketball game, to again create sequences that feel show-off-y and bravura for bravura’s sake, but with several terrific set pieces that set the film apart.

The film begins somewhere in modern times at an American-as-apple-pie burger stand where Amziah and his band are putting on an anthemic bluegrass performance. Amziah is a feral creature of a man, hair unwashed, his sweat-beaded flesh and unwashed hair practically oozing Southern. He runs a beekeeping farm with the help of only a few associates, and it’s brought to his attention by local authorities that lost barrels to the tune of $1,500 a pop (and perhaps higher in street value) from a neighboring farm have shown up in the back of a truck, unidentified.

Amziah hatches a plan using propane heaters to melt the honey out of the barrels to look for an identifying mark that could trace them back to their owner. In one of the film’s many (and seemingly unnecessary) slapstick moments of bodily injury, one of the kids from the Armadillo propane company (Wes Anderson favorite Tony Revolori) gets scalped by the extractor, certainly a bloody scene to open any movie, and setting the unpredictable, careening tone ahead. Amziah and his cronies rush the boy to the hospital, his scalp in a plastic honey jar. It’s an ambitious and gasp-inducing start to a film that intentionally never settles on one particular tone.

As if by happenstance, Amziah reconnects with Kateri (LookingGlass), a young Native woman whom he and his late wife fostered on their farm when she was eight years old. The sweet-faced girl is now working in a diner, though beyond her plot function, Patterson never quite digs into who she is as a person on her own terms. Seemingly no time has passed as their bond resumes, and Amziah, a self-professed Born Again Christian, takes her back under his wing, perhaps priming her to become the heir to a honey empire he knows is on its last legs, and weighed down by a lot of debt because of Amziah’s overeager largesse toward the locals.

LookingGlass, who gives a fine-enough turn that occasionally feels under-directed by her filmmaker whose tendencies lean more toward visual flair than the nuances of performance, has a permanently tacit gaze that suggest she’s unafraid of whatever life bats at her. The bees, in fact, don’t sting her, making his estranged daughter something of a miracle who’s just turned up to save his life.

There’s a chaotically, even brilliantly orchestrated sequence in which Amziah and Kateri are summoned to a local elementary school, where a swarm of bees has left hordes of students stunned or in a panic, and a bus driver in shock after one stings his jugular. Again come the choreographed jolts of bodily injury, as a too-serious teacher walks into a glass door, and a bus goes bouncing over a pothole, sending the evacuated children in the air and their heads slamming into the ceiling. Much of the film’s penchant for unexpected violence leads to troubling plot twists that defy character logic.

In ways I won’t spoil, Amziah is largely absent from the movie’s second half, leading Kateri to take up running the farm herself and become a kind of avenging angel after his hives are stolen. The violent tricks she has up her sleeve in terms of how she gets back at Amziah’s competitors feel abrupt and unexpected, like when she traps someone in a boiling-hot room, leaving them to their death. The film, in moments meant to gin up audience whoops and cheers, seems to celebrate those acts of violence even when they feel totally antithetical to the character.

There’s an amusing ensemble here, with Rob Morgan as a pensive local cop, Cole Sprouse as an informant named Oat who works at a fish fry joint called Sad Abe’s, and Jake Horowitz as a reedy criminal on parole who aids Kateri on an upriver journey and back to retrieve the stolen hives. But there’s also a bit of distracting stunt casting in the form of Kurt Russell as a corrupt mogul named Dob McCoy, who has a special ability to turn locals against each other and ruin their crops, his castor farm an ominous foreshadowing of hell-bent poisonings to come.

Russell’s inclusion feels like he’s simply there to generate an audience reaction, while at the same time, you might imagine no one else could play this imperious, arrogant fellow whom Kateri stops short, at one point, of taking down when she realizes he has a sick wife at home. Her sudden flash of moral quandary feels at odds with the fact that she just killed a man a few scenes ago.

When not following in the footsteps of iconic revenge-plot Westerns or even “The Wages of Fear” in the cinematic smuggling of contraband barrels, “The Rivals of Amziah King” detours into energetically cut and staged musical sequences that feel like chopped-and-screwed John Carney, friends and family gathering in a living room to belt out bluegrass tunes that become earworms of their own. Even when, as during an onstage number during one of the film’s several potlucks (a Midwestern tradition Patterson relishes in here), the group sounds more like the indie band Beirut than traditional bluegrass.

Seeing McConaughey in a sorta-musical has its own obvious pleasures, the actor going all in on a character in ways he rarely has in years, even if his sweaty swagger and smarmy charisma feel like only familiar comforts. There’s too much movie here, but isn’t that better than none at all? Patterson’s big swings in filmmaking transcend the occasional shakier sum of their parts.

Grade: C+

“The Rivals of Amziah King” premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival.

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It was a quintessential, headline-making Bob Iger deal. Only this one wasn’t for the Walt Disney Co. 

Iger stunned both the sports and entertainment worlds on Wednesday after securing a deal to acquire a majority stake in the Los Angeles Lakers, valuing the franchise at a record-breaking $12.5 billion. Iger and Thrive Capital’s Josh Kushner were already reportedly on the hunt for an NBA team, initially eyeing the planned expansion team in Las Vegas before making their surprise pivot. 

The deal marks the second time in a year that one of the most storied franchises in all of professional sports will be sold, injecting a topsy-turvy twist into what had been 46 years of relative stability under the ownership of the Buss family. The shake-up adds even more chaos to Hollywood’s favorite team, which under current owner Mark Walter was already going through an extensive overhaul around superstar point guard Luka Dončić. 

For Iger, who is putting up between $50 million and $100 million of his own money to front the deal, according to a person familiar with similar deals, it’s a role that keeps him at the center of the Los Angeles scene just months after stepping down as CEO and chairman of Disney. 

“As lifelong NBA fans, we are deeply honored for the opportunity to become stewards of the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most iconic sports franchises in the world. We have immense respect for the leadership and vision of Jerry and Jeanie Buss,” Kushner and Iger said in a statement. “Our long-term commitment is to build on that foundation, compete at the highest level, and serve this extraordinary team, its fans, and the city of Los Angeles.”

But it’s a more complicated story than a simple asset sale, with an ongoing investigation into Walter’s business dealings, Kushner’s family ties with President Trump (he’s the younger brother of Jared) and Iger’s history with Disney making this a unique intersection of sports, politics, business and entertainment. 

Here’s a timeline of how this all came together:

How we got here

• June 18, 2025: The Buss family announced an agreement to sell the Lakers to Walter, representing new ownership for the first time since Jerry Buss purchased the team in May 1979.
• Oct. 30, 2025: Walter officially took over as majority owner.
• March 18: Iger stepped down from Disney, handing the reins to new CEO Josh D’Amaro.
• April 23: Iger returned to Thrive Capital, the venture capital firm he previously worked at before rejoining Disney. He serves as an advisor and works with the firm’s staff on investments and founders of companies in its portfolio, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman. 
• June 6: Iger and Kushner, who is the younger brother of Jared Kushner, hired bankers through his firm’s sports division, Thrive Eternal, to help explore a bid for an NBA expansion franchise, according to Bloomberg. 
• July 20: Bloomberg broke the news that Walter’s asset-management firm, Guggenheim Investments, is under a federal investigation for the financial dealings of its insurance company. A week later, Bloomberg Law reported that federal agents had seized the mobile phone and computer of Walter last September as a result of the probe. 
• Aug. 9: While exploring the expansion bids, Iger said he received a suggestion that Walter was interested in a sale. He and Kushner contacted Walter, and the owner was intrigued by the higher offer. The talks went on for three business days.
• Aug. 12: The Lakers officially announced the deal with Iger and Kushner agreeing to acquire Walter’s controlling interest. 

What’s the deal with Walter’s investigation?

Walter is co-chairman and CEO of TWG Global, a holding company that includes the Lakers, Dodgers, Chelsea FC and the entire Professional Women’s Hockey League. 

He is also CEO of Guggenheim Partners, which owns two insurance companies that are at the center of the investigation. Under scrutiny is how those two companies, Delaware Life and Clear Spring, book their revenue and whether the information is properly disclosed. 

While those businesses don’t have anything to do with the Lakers, Walter’s role as CEO of both Guggenheim and TWG Global creates a messy situation. 

Walter is reportedly facing mounting liquidity needs amid federal investigations and regulatory pressure involving his businesses, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The Lakers sale freed up collateral associated with Walter’s original purchase as he sought to basically stabilize his insurance holdings. 

Spokespeople for Guggenheim Partners and the Los Angeles Lakers did not respond to TheWrap’s requests for comment.

Walter said in a statement to ESPN that owning the Lakers had been “one of the great honors of my life,” adding that he has “every confidence the best is still ahead.”

What’s next?

The transaction requires approval from the NBA Board of Governors, with the next board meeting set for September in New York. 

Kushner also holds a minority stake in the Miami Heat and Memphis Grizzlies and will need to divest those holdings. 

How is the deal funded?

That’s the multi-billion dollar question. While Kusher and Iger will put up their own money, neither have enough to cover the entire acquisition. Kushner’s Thrive could provide some funding, as it has more than $50 billion under management. But the two will likely need to find other institutional investors, private equity firms and even a handful of deep-pocketed celebrities to form an investment group to make the purchase a reality.

Just this week, Apollo Sports Capital gave the New York Yankees a $2.6 billion cash infusion, as sports and other live events have become more attractive investments.

They could also tap foreign investors or sovereign wealth funds, although those wealth funds are restricted to a minority ownership of up to 20% in a single franchise.

How common are these NBA deals?

The Lakers changing hands (again) comes at a time when NBA franchise sales have become a regular occurrence, with valuations propped up by the league’s 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal signed in 2024 and two upcoming expansion teams that carry franchise fees between $7 billion and $10 billion paid out to the other owners. 

Beyond the Lakers deal, the Portland Trailblazers sold for $4.25 billion this year, the Boston Celtics sold for $6.1 billion in 2025, and in 2023, Mark Cuban unloaded his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks for $3.5 billion and the Phoenix Suns and Mercury sold for $4 billion.

But once again, the Lakers show why they’re the premier franchise in the NBA.

“The $12.5 billion valuation reflects the strength of the NBA, the scarcity of high-profile sports assets and the economics of buying the Lakers as opposed to just pursuing an expansion franchise in Las Vegas,” said Marc Ganis, president of sports consulting firm SportsCorp. 

He noted that with the expansion fee and cost of building a new arena, buying a new team would’ve ultimately cost as much as buying the majority stake in the Lakers — without the certainty of being awarded a team, the Lakers’ lucrative local television deal or an established franchise and fan base.

The $12.5 billion price also represents a significant premium over the $10 billion valuation attached to Walter’s acquisition less than a year ago. Ganis said Iger and Kushner likely paid that premium to get Walter to agree to a deal directly rather than open one of professional sports’ most coveted assets to a broader bidding process.

Iger and Kushner “likely had to over bid in order to forestall an auction,” Ganis said.

The NBA’s growth could provide additional upside. Ganis pointed to the potential expansion fees that would flow to existing owners, as well as the league’s efforts to expand its footprint in Europe. But he noted that the NBA’s new national television deal was already factored into the Lakers’ $10 billion valuation, meaning the media rights agreements alone don’t explain the additional $2.5 billion.

Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive and principal at Crakes Media, said the Lakers occupy an even more exclusive category among top-tier sports franchises, pointing to the team’s championship history, global fan base, television ratings and position in the Los Angeles market.

“The Lakers are a special kinda special,” Crakes told TheWrap. “As such, they get a super special premium.”

But Crakes noted that the underlying economics alone don’t justify valuations at this level. “Cash flow doesn’t support the valuation,” he said, adding that investments in premier franchises are instead bets on long-term appreciation driven in part by the growing value of sports and other live experiences to the global media business.

“For the medium run, it looks like franchise values are headed higher,” Crakes said.

What does this mean for the Lakers?

Following the announcement of the deal, many eyes were on Dončić, the lynchpin of the franchise. Within a few hours, he posted on X: “Being a Laker means everything to me, and I’m excited to get back on the court and bring a championship to LA. I’ve gotten used to big changes over these last few years, but I know that no matter what, there is no limit to the potential of this iconic franchise. I look forward to meeting Josh and Bob so we can get to work building something special in LA together.”

Dončić is no stranger to ownership change. He was the franchise player on the Dallas Mavericks when Cuban sold his majority stake to Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, of the Las Vegas Sands Corp.

The Lakers also just underwent an extensive retooling in the offseason, losing superstar Lebron James, re-signing offensive threat Austin Reaves and cutting ties with a vast majority of its roster in exchange for new players, led by defensive-minded center Walker Kessler. Notably, the Lakers have locked in several players with expensive long-term contracts, meaning new ownership won’t have much flexibility to make major immediate changes. 

Lakers fans were also excited about Walter’s influence on the team’s back office, which would’ve brought upgraded analytics, staff and resources to match how he upgraded the Dodgers. The Boys in Blue have won two straight MLB World Series and are among the favorites to win a third consecutive championship. 

But that overhaul was only beginning when Iger and Kushner came calling, leaving the incoming owners to inherit Walter’s vision for modernizing the Lakers rather than starting with a clean slate. One of the biggest questions now is whether they continue that blueprint — and how aggressively they’re willing to invest in the infrastructure around Dončić as the franchise chases its next championship. 

Who is Josh Kushner?

Josh Kushner may share a last name with one of President Trump’s more influential advisers and family members, but he has largely kept his distance from the political spotlight occupied by his older brother Jared.

The 41-year-old founded Thrive Capital in 2009 and has since turned the venture capital firm into a major Silicon Valley force, with investments in companies including Instagram, OpenAI and Stripe. Iger joined Thrive as a venture partner after his first retirement from Disney and returned to the firm as a senior adviser after stepping down from the entertainment giant again this year.

Kushner has also charted a different political course from his older brother. He said through a spokesman in 2016 that he was a lifelong Democrat and would not vote for Trump, and donated $250,000 to the Growth Democrats PAC in 2024. His wife, model and entrepreneur Karlie Kloss, has also publicly supported and donated to Democratic candidates. 

The Lakers deal will put the typically low-profile Kushner in a considerably brighter spotlight. Buying one of professional sports’ marquee franchises alongside one of Hollywood’s most high-profile executives puts him at the intersection of tech, entertainment and sports — with a famous political family that’s never far from the picture.

Why would Iger want to buy the Lakers?

There’s obviously the prestige of owning a marquee franchise like the Lakers. Iger is no stranger to the sports scene, as he and wife Willow Bay own the National Women’s Soccer League team Angel FC. He’s also not the first Disney alum to try to buy the team — in the early 1990s, then-CEO Michael Eisner and then-President Mike Ovitz made overtures to have Disney buy the Lakers, but were rebuffed.

Iger also brings decades of experience at the intersection of sports, media and entertainment. During his tenure leading Disney, he oversaw ESPN and developed extensive relationships across the sports industry, including through the network’s longtime partnership with the NBA. That experience could be particularly valuable as media rights, streaming and direct-to-consumer distribution play an increasingly important role in the economics of professional sports.

But there’s a financial benefit as well. As Joe Pompliano of the Huddle Up newsletter noted, billionaires like sports franchises because they can amortize the depreciation of assets over 15 years to lower their tax burden. It effectively shields other income from getting taxed.

Iger declined to comment for the story.

What’s the downside?

Jerry Buss enjoyed being at the center of attention during the Lakers Showtime run in the ‘80s, and is a revered figure in this town because of the team’s legacy of success. But basketball fans are fickle, and could quickly blame the new owners for any struggles or missteps (just look at how Dallas turned on Mavericks owners Adelson and Dumont after they traded away Dončić).

“Sports teams are generally asset plays,” Chris Marangi, president and co-CIO of GAMCO Investors told The Ledger’s Jon Lafayette. “Much like gold or fine art. They’re viewed as stores of value and not based on a PE or cash flow basis.”

For Iger, owning the Lakers could be a way to further burnish his legacy, but there remains a risk he could tarnish his reputation if things go poorly. It’ll depend on whether he can keep up with the franchise’s longstanding winning tradition.