Robert Rodriguez has chosen his home to present Hypnotic , his new thriller starring Ben Affleck .
The Austin-born director will bring a working copy of the film to the SXSW Film Festival on March 12. The news was released in conjunction with the first image from the film, which you can see below…
Written by Rodriguez and Max Borenstein ( Godzilla vs. Kong, Winning Time ), Hypnotic centers on a detective who is investigating a series of unexplained crimes while searching for his missing daughter, whose disappearance is tied to a secret government program.
The cast also includes Alice Braga, JD Pardo, Hala Finley, Dayo Okeniyi, Jeff Fahey, Jackie Earle Haley and William Fichtner . Rodriguez, Mark Gill, Guy Botham, Lisa Ellzey, Jeff Robinov, John Graham and the director’s son, Racer Max Rodriguez , are producing.
Hypnotic has become a case in recent years. First announced in 2019, the film finally entered production in late 2021, only to be blocked three times by the pandemic and hit by the bankruptcy of its financier, Solstice Studios. The producers also sued the insurance company, accusing it of not extending the policy due to Covid. Filming still proceeded, but Hypnotic has been in post-production limbo since late 2021, and still hasn’t found a distributor.
Rodriguez himself hasn’t said much about the project since filming, but at the time he described it as a “family affair”:
My son is now my full time composer. My other son is my co-writer/producer. My daughter takes care of the storyboards. My other son does the animatics, using the graphics engine he developed, with which he designed the We Can Be Heroes sets . And my other son still rides with me.