ScreenDaily is reporting that Blue Fox Entertainment has acquired the North American rights for Irish writer/director John Butler’s third feature, Papi Chulo. The film recently screened to great reception at the Toronto International Film Festival and the BFI London Film Festival.
Cast adrift in Los Angeles, Sean — a lonely TV weatherman — drives past a middle-aged Latino migrant worker standing outside Home Depot looking for work. He decides to hire this kind-looking man — to be his friend. Sean is young, gay and white; Ernesto, portly, straight and married. Despite having nothing in common, they build a sort of friendship based on sign language, until Sean becomes consumed by a deep and obsessional attraction.
U.S. star Matt Bomer, who played the lead in USA Network’s White Collar and who won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film in 2014 for The Normal Heart, takes the lead alongside Alejandro Patiño (The Runaways). Papi Chulo is John Butler’s third feature film, having previously written and directed The Stag and Handsome Devil, both of which premiered at TIFF. Rob Walpole and Rebecca O’Flanagan produce for Treasure Entertainment, with financing by Screen Ireland, Head Gear Films, RTE and Windmill Lane. Head Gear Films’ Phil Hunt and Compton Ross are executive producing together with Bankside’s Hilary Davis and Stephen Kelliher.
Bankside is handling the international sales for the film at the American Film Market, which has just gotten underway. They are also shopping Lee Cronin’s debut feature The Hole in the Ground, as well as Lisa Barros D’Sa & Glenn Leyburn’s Normal People. International titles on the Bankside slate include Peter Strickland’s In Fabric and Adam Randall’s I See You.
In 2018 the world is on fire, and the very notion of friendship across the lines in America now feels under the greatest threat. As such, maybe it is a good time to bring a buddy movie about two men from very different places into American cinemas.
John Butler, Writer/Director
John Butler directed a meaningful film that perfectly balances the humour in a new relationship between two people from completely different cultures.
Blue Fox
Blue Fox is planning a theatrical release in North America for late-Spring 2019. Details on an Irish and UK release should be announced soon.