Searchlight Dates Jesse Eisenberg’s ‘A Real Pain’ For Fall

Searchlight Pictures announced on Tuesday that its dramedy A Real Pain, marking the sophomore feature of actor-turned-filmmaker Jesse Eisenberg, will hit theaters in the thick of awards season, on October 18.

Eisenberg stars opposite Succession Emmy winner Kieran Culkin in the buzz title, which Searchlight snapped up for $10 million in the first major deal out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, as we were first to report. In the film, also scripted by Eisenberg, the pair play David and Benji, cousins who reunite for a tour of Poland to honor their grandmother, but see older tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family’s history.

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Hailing from Topic and Fruit Tree, the film also stars Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing), Will Sharpe (The White Lotus), Kurt Egyiawan (Beasts of No Nation), Liza Sadovy (A Small Light) and Daniel Oreskes (Only Murders in the Building). Producers on the project included Ali Herting, Dave McCary, Ewa Puszczynska, Jennifer Semler, Eisenberg, and Emma Stone.

For Eisenberg, A Real Pain comes on the heels of When You Finish Saving the World, his dramedy starring Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard, which was released by A24 in January 2023 after premiering at Sundance. Currently, his latest film is set to open against Paramount Pictures’ Smile 2 and an unknown title from Universal Pictures. Most recently unveiling Sundance family drama Suncoast, on the heels of its Oscars success with Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, Searchlight’s other upcoming titles include Ned Benson’s romance The Greatest Hits (April 5) and Lanthimos’s anthology Kinds of Kindness (June 21), which recently unveiled its first trailer.

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