If you were at Cannes this year, you knew it: All Jordan Firstman’s electrifying directorial debut “Club Kid” needed was an A24 logo slapped on the top of it, and it’d be ready for the world. Indeed, A24 acquired this hugely crowd-pleasing party movie with a heart out of the Un Certain Regard section for a fall release.

That means they’re serious about the film‘s prospects as an awards contender: It’s playing Toronto and the New York Film Festival, and if you use your power-of-deduction skills, you’ll figure out that it’s almost certainly playing Telluride, too. Firstman, welcome to the rarefied air of the Colorado mountains. And to the gauntlet of Oscar season.

A24 has dropped the first trailer for “Club Kid,” which Firstman writes, directs, and stars in as an over-partied club promoter crashing out in New York City — and whose redemption comes in the form of a 10-year-old child he has no memory of siring. That child also comes in the form of breakout young British star Reggie Absolom, who balances a preternatural affinity for Cocteau Twins and Elliott Smith with a precocious charm that will warm even the coldest of hearts all the way to the back of the theater.

All of that’s to say that “Club Kid” deserves to be as commercial as any movie. Out of Cannes, I called the movie “brazen, funny, and surprisingly earnest” in my IndieWire review, writing that even Firstman’s online haters “won’t be able to resist what’s announced here as a major filmmaking talent with a sensitive side that belies his brash internet persona.”

The movie is also brazenly, unapologetically career, as Peter (with Firstman playing what seems like a loose version of himself) himself is gay and ends up falling for a child psychologist played by Diego Calva. That’s after Peter’s son Arlo is dropped on his doorstep by a strung-out British “innit babe” flushed out from his club-hopping past, Edison (Kirby Howell-Baptiste). Arlo is, in fact, Peter’s child from a long-ago hard-partying night. The first and only time Peter fucked a woman, and now he’s fucked himself into having to finish raising a small boy.

The wall-to-wall superb cast also includes Cara Delevingne, Colleen Camp, Vicki Pepperdine, Nigil Whyte, Eldar Isgandarov, Saturn Risin9, Miss Benny, and Alaska Riley. Producers include “Anora” Oscar winner Alex Coco, plus Galen Core, Michael Bloom, and Ryan Heller.

“Club Kid” opens in select theaters starting November 6, with a wider rollout to follow. Watch the trailer below.

EXCLUSIVE: Former NBCUniversal marketing guru Kevin Harrington has launched a new entertainment marketing agency dubbed Patrick Patrick. 

The company, which quietly launched earlier this year, is already working with major clients such as Netflix, Universal Pictures and AMC on strategic and 360-degree campaigns.

Harrington, who was previously Senior Director, Planning at NBC for Scripted and Unscripted, said his new company is built on a simple belief: Entertainment marketing deserves the same strategic discipline long applied to the world’s biggest consumer brands. 

Prior to NBC, Harrington spent a decade at agencies including Saatchi & Saatchi, Anomaly and Johannes Leonardo, leading campaigns for clients such as General Mills, Google, Adidas, Amazon, Hershey’s, Duracell, Volkswagen and Heineken. 

He then pivoted into the entertainment sector, working at NBCUniversal where he led marketing strategy for major cultural moments and franchises, including SNL50, where he led the marketing strategy and 360-degree campaign for SNL50: The Homecoming Concert and SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night.

Harrington also worked on Love Island U.S., where he led the full repositioning for Love Island U.S. Season 4’s move from CBS to Peacock, then led series and social strategy for Season 7, which hit the number 1 trending topic on social at launch and the number 1 spot in streaming across all platforms in the summer of 2025. Additionally, he wrote the original positioning strategy for Poker Face Season 1 and returned to lead strategy for Season 2. He also wrote the positioning strategy for The Office spinoff The Paper.

Patrick Patrick, which Harrington said will focus on “everything but the trailer and key art”, will combine the rigor of brand strategy with the “cultural intuition” of entertainment marketing, an approach designed to help studios and streamers cut through a crowded content landscape.

The company, which now has a collective of 15 creative strategists that it works with on an ongoing basis, is currently working on multiple series with Netflix, a film with Universal and an undisclosed project with AMC. 

“I really believe that what used to work in entertainment marketing doesn’t work anymore,” Harrington told Deadline. “The industry has changed so much but marketing and marketing strategy has not kept up with it. I feel like the industry is really in need of a fresh perspective and a different way of looking at things.”

He continues: “In entertainment, it’s easy to assume people are going to care about our teaser, trailer, social post or activation just because of the associated talent, IP, directors or story. Twenty years ago, when it was 20 channels competing neatly against each other, fair. Now, when it’s streamers vs. TV networks vs social media networks in a massively complex content landscape, you’ve got to get a lot more strategic about how you position your content to break through.

“I started my career working on some of the biggest brands in the world – Pampers, Duracell, Volkswagen, General Mills and Google. They taught me a cutthroat level of strategic and creative rigor that was necessary to get people to notice and care. I found that when I applied that level of rigor coupled with the inherent intrigue of entertainment on properties like SNL, Love Island and more, it was a formula that really worked. So I started Patrick Patrick to bring that magic to more streamers, networks and studios.”