Andrew Patterson Bets Big: Hollywood Wanted Him First
His sophomore feature, The Rivals of Amziah King, arrives via Black Bear over a year after its world premiere at SXSW 2025 — which is its own statement about how the distribution landscape works in 2026, and not a flattering one.
There is a specific kind of filmmaker Hollywood cannot leave alone — the one who makes something quiet and perfect on almost nothing, then gets a phone call from everyone who ignored them before. Andrew Patterson is that filmmaker. *The Vast of Night* cost almost nothing, looked like a miracle, and apparently landed him in a room with Steven Soderbergh being told he could direct something large and serious. He was also offered a *Cloverfield* sequel somewhere in the middle. He turned both down.
His sophomore feature, *The Rivals of Amziah King*, arrives via Black Bear over a year after its world premiere at SXSW 2025 — which is its own statement about how the distribution landscape works in 2026, and not a flattering one. A film that generated genuine buzz sits in the drawer for a year while the industry figures out what to do with something that doesn't fit a pre-existing franchise slot.
This is the part worth sitting with. Patterson had the Soderbergh call. He had the *Cloverfield* key. He chose neither. In an era when every director with one well-received film gets immediately absorbed into a studio machine — resurrected IP, franchise vertebrae, something with a number after the title — he kept making his own thing at his own pace. That is either stubbornness or clarity, and the difference only reveals itself in the work.
Meanwhile, Netflix is having a different kind of week in the film conversation — the Hong Sangsoo film *Nowhere to Lay My Eyes* is making the rounds with Kim Minhee delivering what *Variety* is calling a melancholy masterclass, which sounds exactly right for a director whose entire filmography operates like a recurring dream you keep having slightly differently. And Marvel has formally announced its X-Men cast, with Adam Driver, Christopher Abbott, and newcomer Maya Boyd as Storm — a lineup interesting enough that even the people who stopped caring about the MCU two phases ago will at least look up.
But Patterson is the story today. Not because Hollywood wanted him and he said yes — because they wanted him and he said not yet, and *The Rivals of Amziah King* is what he did instead.
The verdict: directors who resist the machine are the ones worth watching. The ones who take the franchise call are the ones you forget by the third act.
