Searchlight Pictures on Tuesday unveiled the first trailer for A Real Pain, the buzzy Sundance dramedy marking the sophomore feature of actor-turned-filmmaker Jesse Eisenberg, which hits theaters on October 18.
In the film, also scripted by Eisenberg, he and Kieran Culkin play cousins David and Benji, who reunite for a tour of Poland to honor their grandmother, but see older tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family’s history. Searchlight snapped the pic up for $10 million in the first major deal out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, as we were first to report, and sources tell us the project is being looked at as an awards contender.
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Hailing from Topic and Fruit Tree, A Real Pain also stars Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing), Will Sharpe (The White Lotus), Kurt Egyiawan (Beasts of No Nation), Liza Sadovy (A Small Light) and Daniel Oreskes (Only Murders in the Building). Producers on the project included Ali Herting, Dave McCary, Ewa Puszczynska, Jennifer Semler, Eisenberg, and Emma Stone.
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For Eisenberg, the film comes on the heels of When You Finish Saving the World, his dramedy starring Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard, which was released by A24 in January 2023 after premiering at Sundance. Currently, his newest film is set to open against Paramount Pictures’ Smile 2, which also just released its first trailer, as well as Lionsgate’s Mark Wahlberg thriller Flight Risk, and an as-yet-unnamed title from Universal Pictures.
Most recently unveiling Sundance family drama Suncoast, on the heels of its Oscars triumph with Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, Searchlight will next release Lanthimos’s anthology Kinds of Kindness (June 21), which is coming off of its Cannes premiere, as well the Hulu-bound The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat (August 23) and Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch, starring Amy Adams, which today was announced as being among the first titles selected for the 2024 Toronto Film Festival.
View the trailer for A Real Pain above.