2025 SXSW Film and TV Festival preview: 11 movies and TV shows we’re excited to see
Oscar season is over, and Emmy season is just heating up, so what better time than right now for some tacos?
This week marks the start of the annual South by Southwest Film & TV Festival in Austin, Texas, an event known as a launching pad for high-profile genre films and television series looking for an imprimatur of “cool.” This year’s lineup is no different, with several major spring releases set to debut in Austin before the festival’s enthusiastic attendees. The 11 movies and TV shows we’re most excited to see during the SXSW Film & TV Festival are ahead.
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Another Simple Favor (March 7)
Seven years after A Simple Favor became a sleeper hit for Lionsgate, the film’s stars Blake Lively, Anna Kendrick, Henry Golding, and filmmaker Paul Feig are finally ready to unveil the sequel. The original movie was based on the novel by Darcey Bell; the new project is an original idea hatched by Feig and A Simple Favor writer Jessica Sharzer. Feig stressed that the movie will appeal to fans of the original, which had grossed $90 million worldwide before becoming a streaming hit on Netflix and other services. “I was seeing what people were writing about, how excited they were, and what they thought the movie’s going to be,” Feig said in an interview with Decider last year before revealing he and Sharzer had scrapped their original screenplay for something more aligned with the expectations of the audience. “I’m just like, ‘I think what we have isn’t going to be what they are hoping for.’ Not that I want to try to match expectations, but I also don’t want to subvert expectations. I don’t like when movies do that. ‘Oh, you like that? Well, screw you, you’re going to get this!’ So, we threw out about 70 percent of that script and, during the [writers’] strike, rewrote it.” The premiere of Another Simple Favor will also have tabloid reporters paying close attention to the festival: The event will presumably mark the first time Lively has spoken publicly since her well-publicized legal battle with It Ends With Us director and star Justin Baldoni. Another Simple Favor begins streaming on May 1 on Amazon Prime Video.
O’Dessa (March 8)
Patti Cake$ filmmaker Geremy Jasper returns with what looks like an unhinged rock opera, an original musical that mixes Mad Max with The Running Man. Sadie Sink (Stranger Things) stars as the title character, “a farm girl who goes on a journey to retrieve a family heirloom and rescue her one true love.” Sink got her start in musical theater and has said previously that the film gave her the chance to go back to her roots while also continuing her growth as a performer. “I’m excited for everyone to see it because it's a combination of basically everything that I've done in my career so far, and it'll be exciting to share it,” she said last year. O’Dessa premieres on March 20 on Hulu.
Death of a Unicorn (March 8)
No SXSW schedule would be complete without a strange A24 genre film, and this year’s entry is Death of a Unicorn. Directed by Alex Scharfman, the horror comedy is about a father and daughter (played by Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega) who accidentally run over a unicorn en route to the father’s boss’s secretive estate. Chaos ensues. In addition to Rudd and Ortega, the film stars Will Poulter (who will also appear this spring in the A24 film Warfare), Richard E. Grant, Téa Leoni, and Anthony Carrigan. A24 will debut Death of a Unicorn in theaters on March 28.
The Accountant 2 (March 8)
Another Simple Favor isn’t the only long-awaited sequel Amazon MGM Studios will bring to Austin this weekend. The distribution company also has The Accountant 2 set to premiere at SXSW. The movie comes nine years after the original grossed over $155 million worldwide and became a streaming and cable staple. “It was a movie that I found that I would hear about from people,” star Ben Affleck recently told Vanity Fair. “It was a movie that stuck around, that people would talk about and say, ‘Oh, hey, I like The Accountant.’ And there seemed to be a lot of goodwill towards it.” The sequel reunites Affleck, costar Jon Bernthal, and filmmaker Gavin O’Connor — but not original costar Anna Kendrick. Fans should expect more bare-knuckle brawls and conspiracy. Unlike Another Simple Favor, The Accountant 2 is headed to theaters on April 25 before it eventually arrives on the Amazon streaming platform.
Holland (March 9)
Fresh director Mimi Cave is back with another streaming thriller, Holland. The new film stars Oscar winner Nicole Kidman, Succession Emmy winner Matthew Macfadyen, and Gael Garcia Bernal. It focuses on a midwestern housewife whose carefully curated world is not as perfect as it seems. The trailer mixes noir flourishes with Lynchian imagery. "There's an odd sort of offbeat humor about it that we're hoping people get and enjoy,” Cave said in a recent interview with People. Holland premieres directly on Amazon Prime Video beginning on March 27.
Drop (March 9)
Happy Death Day and Freaky director Christopher Landon is back with a Hitchcockian thriller about the dangers of AirDrops. The White Lotus Emmy Award nominee Meghann Fahy stars as a single mother who goes on a blind date and is quickly terrorized by an anonymous threat who taunts her with messages to her phone: either kill her blind date (Brandon Sklenar) or watch as her son is murdered at home. The trailer looks like a lot of fun, and it’s easy to imagine the typically raucous SXSW audience eating this up when it premieres on Saturday night. Produced by Jason Blum, Drop hits theaters on April 11.
The Studio (March 7)
The industry’s next great satire is The Studio, and Apple TV+ is wisely premiering the Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg comedy in front of SXSW audiences that previously embraced several Rogen hits (including Knocked Up, Neighbors, Sausage Party, Long Shots, and Good Boys). Rogen and Goldberg co-created, co-produced, co-directed, and co-wrote the forthcoming series with Emmy Awards winners Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory, and Frida Perez. The Studio stars Rogen as a newly installed studio head named Matt Remick who tries to balance his deep love and respect for movies and filmmakers with the realities of running a studio in the modern era. Ike Barinholtz, Chase Sui Wonders, and Kathryn Hahn play Remick’s executive team members, with Catherine O’Hara as his mentor. Several major stars play heightened versions of themselves, including Martin Scorsese, Olivia Wilde, Zo? Kravitz, Ron Howard, and Anthony Mackie. The series begins streaming on Apple TV+ on March 26.
#1 Happy Family USA (March 9)
Another highly anticipated comedy series coming to Austin is #1 Happy Family USA. Co-created by Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady (whose credits include South Park), #1 Happy Family USA is about “the maniacally upbeat Husseins — the most patriotic, most peaceful, and most definitely-not-suspicious Muslim family in post-9/11 ‘Amreeka.’ With satire and absurdity, it redefines finding humor in hardship as they navigate the early 2000s under the watchful eyes of their terrified neighbors.” The voice cast includes Youssef, Alia Shawkat, Mandy Moore, Chris Redd, Salma Hindy, Randa Jarrar, Akaash Singh, and Whitmer Thomas. The Amazon Prime Video series will start streaming on April 17.
Government Cheese (March 9)
The comedy-drama hybrid stars David Oyelowo and begins streaming on April 16 with four episodes. Apple calls the show “a surrealist family comedy.” Set in 1969, San Fernando Valley, Government Cheese “tells the story of the Chambers, a quirky family pursuing lofty and seemingly impossible dreams, beautifully unfettered by the realities of the world. When Hampton Chambers (Oyelowo) is released from prison, his long-awaited family reunion doesn’t go quite as he’d planned. During his absence, Hampton’s wife, Astoria (Simone Missick), and sons, Einstein (Evan Alexander Ellison) and Harrison (Jahi Di’Allo Winston), have formed an unconventional family unit, and Hampton’s return spins their world into chaos.”
Happy Face (March 10)
Executive produced by Robert and Michelle King (The Good Wife, The Good Fight) and written by Jennifer Cacicio (Your Honor), Happy Face is a true-crime drama series based on the real-life serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson (known as the Happy Face Killer) and his daughter Melissa Moore, who found out about her father’s crimes as a teen. Dennis Quaid stars as Jesperson, and Annaleigh Ashford is Melissa. The drama series premieres March 20 on Paramount+.
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