Sundance 2016: Amazon Studios Picks Up Todd Solondz’s WIENER-DOG

TheWrap reports that Amazon Studios has picked up Todd Solondz‘s latest, Wiener-dog, after making its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The film tells several inter-connected stories about several people whose lives are touched by a dachshund. The early reception out of Sundance has been very good, and as a moderate fan of Solondz I’m pretty hyped up for this one.

Wiener-dog stars Greta Gerwig, Danny DeVito, Kieran Culkin, Julie Delpy and Ellen Burstyn. Amazon plans to release the film in theaters before a release on Amazon Prime at a later time, though no specific dates have been announced. This is the third big grab from Amazon at Sundance, having previously picked up the rights to Love and Friendship and Manchester by the Sea.

Here’s the synopsis from Sundance:

Wiener-Dog tells several stories featuring people who find their life inspired or changed by one particular dachshund, who seems to be spreading a certain kind of comfort and joy. Man’s best friend starts out teaching a young boy some contorted life lessons before being taken in by a compassionate vet tech named Dawn Wiener. Dawn reunites with someone from her past and sets off on a road trip picking up some depressed mariachis along the way. Wiener-Dog then encounters a floundering film professor, as well as an embittered elderly woman and her needy granddaughter—all longing for something more.

Twenty years ago, Todd Solondz took the Sundance Film Festival by storm when Welcome to the Dollhouse won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1996 Festival. Since then he has gone on to establish himself as one of the most uncompromising voices working in film. Wiener-Dog is vintage Solondz, brimming with brilliantly caustic and truthful observations about the human condition. He has a unique ability to find humor in the darkest of subject matter, allowing an empathetic light to shine on it.