The saga over Maude Apatow’s directorial debut has a happy ending. Her TIFF player “Poetic License” will be released by the venerated Sony Pictures Classics, following a distribution debacle with original buyer Row K Entertainment.
Variety reported in March that Row K had become inundated with unpaid bills and a creative exodus after less than a year in business. Apatow’s “Poetic License,” starring her mother Leslie Mann and Cooper Hoffman, saw a release date shuffle before the film’s sales reps at WME Independent took the project back out to market. Now, the studio behind “Call Me By Your Name” will roll out the movie in 2027.
The film garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews on its Toronto premiere last September, and SPC took worldwide rights in the negotiation. It follows former therapist and soon-to-be empty nester Liz (Mann), who relocates to a new town for her husband’s job. Her quiet attempt to settle in takes an unexpected turn when she becomes the point of tension between two inseparable best friends and college seniors, Sam (Hoffman) and Ari (Andrew Barth Feldman). As their fierce competition for her attention threatens to upend their lives, Liz is pulled into a tangle of longing, self-discovery, and the intoxicating thrill of being truly seen – forcing her to confront the life she’s built and the one she still craves.
