Heartwarming Outer Banks journey of discovery proves a box office winner.
We loved Peanut Butter Falcon. The critics loved it (95% tomatometer from Rotten Tomatoes). And, it seems, so did audiences. From humble beginnings, with a script written and directed by Outer Banks native Tyler Nilson and his friend Michael Schwartz , the movie outperformed every other indie film this year. When the National Review tells the story, that makes it time to share.
This year indie cinema pretty much got wiped out. But there was one film that far outperformed expectations: The Peanut Butter Falcon, the charming Huckleberry Finn-like tale of two modern misfits on the run in the Outer Banks, one played by Shia LaBeouf, the other by Zack Gottsagen, an actor who has Down Syndrome. It sold not at Sundance but at the less prestigious South by Southwest film festival, for a sum so low the trades didn’t even report the number. (Typically this means a sales price of less than $1 million). After a late-summer release it has earned $21 million and proven a crowd-pleaser outside the big coastal metro areas.
To read the complete National Review article, click here.