Apple Buys Cooper Raiff Sundance Film ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’

Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Actual Clean” is formally dancing to Apple TV Plus. The tech large has nabbed the second characteristic from the heat-seeking director out of this 12 months’s digital version of the Sundance Movie Competition.

Apple emerged victorious from a aggressive bidding scenario that attracted Netflix, Amazon and Sony Photos as potential patrons.

The deal was brokered by Endeavor Content material with a sale closing as excessive as $15 million, a person accustomed to the talks said.

“Cha Cha Actual Clean” stars Raiff as a current graduate working as a bar mitzvah hype man. Whereas on the job, he strikes up a novel friendship with a younger mom (Dakota Johnson) and her teenage daughter (Vanessa Burghardt). Leslie Mann, Evan Assante, Raúl Castillo and Odeya Rush fill out the ensemble.

Erik Feig’s PictureStart and Johnson and Ro Donnelly’s TeaTime Photos produced the movie alongside Endeavor Content material. The film walked into this 12 months’s Sundance Movie Competition as one of many buzziest gross sales titles. Raiff’s 2020 debut “Shithouse” gained the grand jury prize on the SXSW Movie Competition, inserting the writer-director on the map.

The worth tag on “Cha Cha Actual Clean” represents the best buy but for this 12 months’s digital Sundance market. Final 12 months, Apple additionally signed a record-breaking $25 million test for “CODA,”  which is at present making the awards rounds.

Further titles which have discovered distributors at this 12 months’s Sundance embrace “Fireplace of Love” and “The Territory” to Nationwide Geographic, “Dwelling” to Sony Photos Classics and “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” to Searchlight and Hulu.

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