Andy Samberg’s post-SNL career has been marked by his beloved role on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and a collection of perfectly offbeat comedies like Hot Rod and Popstar: Never Stop Stopping that he’s churned out with the help of his Lonely Island pals. And now, it looks like he’s hit paydirt.
Palm Springs, which Samberg produced along with his pals Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone and Becky Sloviter, premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was quickly purchased by Hulu and indie film distributor NEON for a record $17,500,000.69 — beating the previous record set by Amazon’s purchase of Late Night by just 69 cents.
“We spent over $85 million of our own money on this movie, WE ARE TAKING A BATH on this deal,” Samberg, Taccone, Schaffer and Sloviter said in a statement. “We hope Neon and Hulu are happy but we definitely have a lot of explaining to do to our families.” (They’re kidding. The film was financed by Limelight Entertainment.)
Cast and crew are keeping the Palm Springs plot under wraps. All we know is that it’s a “bonkers” re-imagining of a rom-com trope that features some sort of “metaphysical event” and Samberg said he took inspiration from the much-maligned Star Wars prequels.
Director Max Barbakow played coy in his interview with Variety. “We’re subverting a lot of the tropes you usually see in wedding movies and rom-coms,” Barbakow said. “Tonally, it’s that really nice charged area between laughter and deep feeling and then just bonkers stuff. We’re trying a lot of things.”
No official word on when we’ll be able to catch this one for ourselves yet but everything about it suggests it’ll be a good time when we do. Stay tuned.
