Jordan Firstman’s ‘Club Kid’ Sells to A24 for $17M at Cannes

Jordan Firstman arrived at Cannes twerking on the red-carpet steps of the Debussy theater and left with a $17 million deal. Not a bad week.

The comedian’s debut feature Club Kid — which Firstman wrote, directed, and stars in — has sold to A24 following a fierce bidding war that drew offers from Netflix, Mubi, Focus Features, and Searchlight, among others. It marks the first major acquisition of the 2026 festival, and the number is a statement: multiple studios were in the eight-figure range before A24 ultimately closed the deal. UTA Independent Film Group handled the domestic sale; Charades is managing international rights.

The film premiered in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section on May 15, and the response was immediate. One studio buyer reportedly called it “the most commercial movie at the festival by far: it works on a number of different levels to different age groups.” A festival regular described it as an awards movie “for sure.”

What ‘Club Kid’ Is Actually About

Club Kid follows Peter Green, a dissolute New York party promoter — played by Firstman with a generous helping of self-deprecating irony — whose carefully curated life of house music, casual sex, and ketamine benders gets upended when a nine-year-old boy shows up on his doorstep. The child, Arlo, turns out to be the son he unknowingly fathered with a British tourist during one hazy night a decade earlier. His mother has since died, leaving Peter as the boy’s legal guardian. Peter, who swears he’s never even been with a woman, has to figure it out anyway.

It’s a story we’ve seen before — think Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid through to Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon — and Firstman leans into that lineage rather than running from it. Variety’s review calls it “a breakout crowdpleaser” that earns its sentimentality, praising the film’s “relaxed, unexpectedly earnest charm” while noting Firstman isn’t quite as sophisticated a dramatist as he is a comedian. The second act runs long, and the kid character could use more dimension on the page. But the overall verdict is warm: a debut with enough promise to mark Firstman as a genuine next-generation queer filmmaker to watch.

Arlo is played by Reggie Absolom, a young British actor recently seen in The Other Bennet Sister, whose performance critics have singled out as mature and magnetic. Diego Calva — best known for Babylon — plays Oscar, a dreamy social worker who enters Peter’s newly sobered-up life. And Cara Delevingne plays Sophie, Peter’s sharp-edged business partner in the club world.

The film was shot by Adam Newport-Berra and edited by Taylor Levy and Sofía Subercaseaux. Its opening sequence — a sweat-soaked, bass-heavy ten-minute montage that turns out to span a full decade — has been widely cited as one of the film’s cleverest formal moves.

The Cannes Premiere Moment Everyone’s Talking About

The screening itself became a moment. After the film ended, the crowd gave it a seven-minute standing ovation. Delevingne was visibly emotional, tearing up on stage. And Firstman, never one to let a moment pass quietly, picked up young Reggie Absolom and started a chant in his honor — a continuation of the playful energy the two had already shown at the film’s photocall earlier that day.

It was a fitting scene for a film about an unserious man learning to take something seriously. Firstman had introduced the movie by telling the audience how thrilled he was to be “in de bussy” — a joke that landed exactly as intended — before the film proceeded to be something warmer and more vulnerable than anyone in that room expected.

For context on just how significant the sale is: Club Kid is the rare buzzy American film at a festival that has been notably light on Hollywood product this year, with only Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love playing in official competition. That scarcity, combined with the film’s genuine crossover appeal, made it a target the moment word got out that it was available. The deal closed fast.

Firstman first broke through during COVID lockdown with a viral run of absurdist, queer-coded impressions and sketches, and made his feature acting debut in Sébastian Silva’s 2023 meta-comedy Rotting in the Sun, playing a fictionalized version of himself. Club Kid is a different kind of statement — proof that the bit can become something bigger.

A24 now has the film. Release date TBD. The chant continues.