• The first trailer for The Rivals of Amziah King is here, with Matthew McConaughey starring as a beekeeper-turned-avenger in rural Oklahoma
• Kurt Russell plays the villainous rival honey-maker, with Angelina LookingGlass, Cole Sprouse, and Tony Revolori also starring
• The film premiered at SXSW 2025 and is described as part hardscrabble drama, part revenge thriller, part musical — and unlike anything else out there
• Black Bear will release the film in limited theaters August 14, going wide August 21
• It’s the sophomore feature from The Vast of Night director Andrew Patterson, who has a habit of making singular films that take a while to reach audiences

Matthew McConaughey has found his hive — and someone just stole his queen. The first trailer for The Rivals of Amziah King is finally here, and it’s every bit as strange and thrilling as the long wait has suggested it would be.

The film follows Amziah King, a charismatic, musically gifted man who runs the premier honey operation in the deep backwoods of rural Oklahoma while leading a bluegrass-playing band of misfits. When his estranged foster daughter unexpectedly returns, he sees a chance to rebuild something — a family, a business, a future. But the honey game, as it turns out, is ruthless. His rivals want everything he’s built, and Amziah King is not the kind of man who lets that go quietly.

Kurt Russell oozes villainous intent as the rival honey-maker at the center of the conflict, and newcomer Angelina LookingGlass plays the estranged foster daughter — a role that reviewers who caught the SXSW premiere have already called revelatory. Cole Sprouse, Owen Teague, Scott Shepherd, Rob Morgan, and Tony Revolori round out the cast.

Part Revenge Thriller, Part Musical, Part Something Else Entirely

If the trailer feels like it’s doing a lot, that’s because the film genuinely is. The Rivals of Amziah King is being described as a shape-shifting narrative — part hardscrabble drama, part revenge thriller, and something more mythical underneath it all. There are musical sequences, too. Bluegrass ones. That feel, according to IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio, who reviewed the film at SXSW, 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.”

Lattanzio called the film an earnest crowdpleaser and praised director Andrew Patterson’s vision and production values, writing that “vistas of the Oklahoma landscape, and Patterson’s tenderness for the Choctaw Nation” signal a filmmaker with serious craft — “each take embodying a sense of having been precisely storyboarded and choreographed.” He also noted that 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.”

The film is Terrence Malick-adjacent in its mood and scope — genuinely unlike anything playing at your local multiplex — which might be exactly why it’s taken this long to arrive.

A Long Road to Theaters

The Rivals of Amziah King premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film and TV Festival over a year ago, and it’s been a slow crawl to a release date since. Production company Black Bear is releasing the film themselves — in limited theaters on August 14, then going wide on August 21.

It’s a familiar trajectory for Patterson, the Oklahoma filmmaker behind The Vast of Night — one of the great debut features of the last decade, an Amblin-esque UFO story that premiered at Slamdance in January 2019 and didn’t reach Prime Video until May 2020. His films, it seems, take their time getting to audiences. But they tend to be worth it.

McConaughey, meanwhile, continues his post-True Detective era of swinging big on unconventional projects — and if the trailer is any indication, Amziah King might be one of the most committed performances he’s given in years. The man is covered in bees and absolutely not flinching.

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