The Rivals of Amziah King is finally headed for release via Black Bear, ending a long wait for a film that was shot in 2023 and premiered at South by Southwest in the spring of 2025. For Matthew McConaughey, it also marks a return to live-action productions after five years away.
That makes the timing matter now. The film is set to reach select theaters this Friday, giving audiences their first real chance to see why McConaughey chose it over projects that could have paid him a lot more. He said he picked it instead of other movies he could have done for a whole lot more money, a choice that now reads differently in light of how long the film sat before release.
Andrew Patterson spent years developing The Rivals of Amziah King as the follow-up to The Vast of Night, and this remains his sophomore feature. The movie puts McConaughey in the title role as Amziah King, a honeymaker, born-again Christian and bluegrass musician in rural Oklahoma. Angelina LookingGlass plays Kateri, his foster daughter for a few years before life pulled them apart, giving the film a personal core inside a story that also digs into the logistics and underbelly of the honey business.
The delay is part of what gives the release its weight. The film was shot in 2023, yet it did not reach audiences until a year and a half after its South by Southwest premiere, a stretch long enough to make the project feel almost stranded between production and distribution. Black Bear is the company now bringing it out, and that means the financier has stepped into the distributor role rather than leaving the film in limbo.
That shift also explains what the release resolves and what it does not. Paul Greengrass’ The Lost Bus reached the public first, but The Rivals of Amziah King is now closing the gap that separated a finished festival premiere from an actual launch. The film’s path suggests patience from everyone involved, though the longer question is why a movie completed in 2023 needed so much time before its backer became the one to put it in front of audiences. For McConaughey, though, the answer is already visible on screen: he came back for a film he wanted, not one that simply paid best.
