RyanFleck Tagged Articles at Cinematical

By Kim Voynar (originally published during the 2008 Sundance Film Festival)

Following up their critically acclaimed film Half Nelson, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have their newest film, Sugar, at Sundance this year. Boden and Fleck have quite the knack for tackling subjects most people wouldn't think of making a film about (a crack-addicted middle-school teacher in Half Nelson, a young baseball star from the Dominican Republic in Sugar) and making insightful, compelling films about them. This time around, Boden and Fleck take us to the fictional Kansas City Knight's baseball academy in the Dominican Republic, where we meet Miguel "Sugar" Santos (Algenis Perez Soto), a hotshot young pitcher who was signed to train for the league at the tender age of 16.

The pressure on the kids at the baseball academy is tremendous. While it offers the few who do make it to the top a chance to succeed professionally and financially beyond their wildest dreams, those who don't make the cut are chewed up and spit out by the organization with all the emotional involvement of a stockbroker buying and selling one stock versus another.

Cinematical has received this exclusive poster for Sugar, which marks Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's long-awaited follow up to their hit indie Half Nelson. This time both Fleck and Boden share writing and directing duties on a film that follows a Dominican baseball star who's recruited to play minor league ball in the United States. Back when Sugar premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Kim called it "insightful and compelling," saying "the baseball scenes are incredibly shot; in fact, the entire film is just gorgeous, like a painting brought to life." I've been itching to see Sugar ever since it was announced; like Half Nelson, I expect a gritty reality that doesn't show up on screen as often as it should. Boden and Fleck have a knack for scraping just below the surface, discovering topics that are either ignored or simply not executed correctly.

Click on the image below to view the entire poster, then head after the jump to check out the trailer. For more on the film, head over to its official website. Sugar arrives in theaters (in NY and LA) on April 3rd.

With Ryan Gosling in the lead role, Half Nelson wowed audiences and even nabbed the actor an Oscar nomination. Now screenwriters Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden are finishing up their second feature film, Sugar, which Erik Davis wrote about back in March. Now The Hollywood Reporter has posted that HBO Films has signed onto the sweet team to finance and distribute the film, which will celebrate its world premiere next month at the snowy Sundance Film Festival in Joseph Smith country. HBO is currently trying to figure out if they want to debut the film in the network, or in theaters through Picturehouse. (This will be determined by reaction at Sundance.)

While the straight-to-television release might sound surprising, I imagine that's because there's no big name like Gosling starring in it. With Fleck and Boden sharing the directorial chair, Sugar is a "fish-out-of-water" story about a man named Miguel Sugar Santos, "a Dominican baseball prospect who is sent to play in a small Midwestern town after being scouted in his home country." Santos is being played by newbie actor Algenis Perez Soto, and he's joined by names such as Richard Bull (Nels Oleson on Little House on the Prairie) and Michael Gaston (Jericho).

While we might not get a chance to slump into those theater chairs with our popcorn and watch Sugar, we'll see the duo's work again on the big screen soon enough. As Erik posted in May, the team is adapting Special Topics in Calamity Physics for Miramax, and It's Kind of a Funny Story for Paramount.

Last season, Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden had a career year -- the kind most young filmmakers dream about when they're first starting out. Thanks, in part, to a superb Oscar-nominated performance by Ryan Gosling, their Half Nelson went from tiny indie film to major awards contender in the span of only a few months. Now, Fleck and Boden are looking for another break-out performance -- this time, they're heading to the Dominican Republic to find a star. The two will write and direct Sugar, to be produced by Journeyman Pictures and Hunting Lane Films (the two shingles behind Nelson), with HBO Films possibly interested in coming onboard as well.

Pic will delve into the world of minor league baseball, shown through the eyes of a young Dominican prospect snatched from his home country and brought to the United States to play ball. Though the film will be based on a fictional character named Miguel "Sugar" Santos, there's no doubt Fleck and Boden will look to expose the often shady world of baseball scouting by taking an innocent kid and dropping him in a cutthroat, competitive environment. With production set to begin later this summer, Fleck and producers are currently searching for their cast (which could include nonpros) and scouting locations in the Midwest and Dominican. Aside from Sugar, Fleck and Boden have also signed on to write and direct It's Kind of a Funny Story for Paramount.

Not many films take us inside the world of minor league baseball, especially from the vantage point of a foreigner asked to compete with and against a group of guys who have been training their entire lives to land a spot on one of these teams. Fleck chose a very claustrophobic style for Half Nelson, partly because the majority of scenes took place indoors -- thus, I'll be curious to see if he spreads things out a bit now, utilizing the open-aired environment of a baseball diamond as his canvas. Needless to say, I cannot wait for this one.