• The first trailer for The Rivals of Amziah King is out, over a year after the film debuted at SXSW 2025.
• Matthew McConaughey plays a bluegrass-playing beekeeper defending his business and estranged foster daughter in rural Oklahoma.
• The film already holds a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes from 31 reviews, with critics calling it potentially McConaughey’s best work in years.
• Kurt Russell, Cole Sprouse, Tony Revolori, and Angelina LookingGlass co-star; LookingGlass makes her feature film debut.
• The film hits limited theaters August 14, 2026, with a wide national release August 21.

Matthew McConaughey is back — and if the critics who’ve already seen The Rivals of Amziah King are to be believed, he’s never been better. The first trailer for the highly anticipated crime drama dropped Monday, giving fans their first real look at the Oscar winner as Amziah King, a charismatic, bluegrass-playing beekeeper deep in the backwoods of rural Oklahoma who’ll do whatever it takes to protect his business and his family.

McConaughey posted the trailer himself on social media with a caption that sets the tone perfectly: “there’s truth. and there’s lies, in everything.”

The footage is something of a genre shapeshifter — part family drama, part crime thriller, with musical sequences woven through. At its center is the relationship between McConaughey’s Amziah and his estranged foster daughter, played by Angelina LookingGlass in her first credited feature-film role. When she unexpectedly returns, Amziah sees a second chance at connection and the possibility of building something real — a family business built on honey. But as the synopsis makes clear, the honey game is ruthless, and the rivals of the title are coming for everything he’s built.

Kurt Russell plays the primary antagonist — a wealthy businessman with his sights set on Amziah’s operation. The supporting cast rounds out nicely with Cole Sprouse, Tony Revolori, and Owen Teague also on board.

A Long Wait for a Film That’s Already Turning Heads

This trailer has been a long time coming. The Rivals of Amziah King actually wrapped production back in early 2023 — and if you were in the Birmingham, Alabama metro area that summer, you might have spotted McConaughey and Russell on location. The film then premiered at SXSW in March 2025 to a wave of critical enthusiasm, before getting stuck in what Collider described as “distribution limbo” for the better part of a year. Black Bear Pictures finally stepped in to set things right, and now the August release is locked.

The critical response from that SXSW premiere has been nothing short of remarkable. The film currently sits at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes from 31 reviews. The official critic consensus calls it “a sprawling, unpredictable and genre-blurring epic, anchored by Matthew McConaughey’s charm and Angelina LookingGlass’ striking debut.” The trailer’s pull-quotes lean into the crowd-pleaser angle hard — and the late-summer release window from Black Bear signals genuine confidence in the film’s commercial potential.

Some critics are going even further, floating the idea that this could be the best performance of McConaughey’s career. That’s a bold claim for a guy who won an Academy Award for Dallas Buyers Club and delivered one of television’s all-time great performances in True Detective. But the early word has been consistent enough that it’s hard to dismiss.

Where This Fits in McConaughey’s Recent Run

This is a pivotal moment in McConaughey’s career comeback. After stepping back from leading roles for several years — his last major one before his hiatus was Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen in 2019 — he returned to the top of the call sheet with The Lost Bus, the Apple TV+ thriller directed by Paul Greengrass. Now Rivals is set to follow, and beyond that, he’s attached to Brothers, an Apple TV+ drama series alongside Woody Harrelson that amounts to the True Detective reunion fans have been quietly hoping for.

The film is directed by Andrew Patterson, whose debut feature The Vast of Night announced him as a genuine filmmaking talent back in 2019. The script was co-written by Patterson and James Montague, and the producing team includes David Heyman — one of the producers behind Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the Harry Potter franchise — alongside Teddy Schwarzman and Jeffrey Clifford.

The Rivals of Amziah King opens in limited theaters on August 14, 2026, with a wide national release following on August 21.

The post McConaughey’s Rivals of Amziah King Trailer Is Here appeared first on Cream.

• 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.

The post Matthew McConaughey Goes Full Beekeeper in ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ Trailer appeared first on Cream.