One week ahead of the Sundance Film Festival, IFC and Showtime have partnered to acquire the Anthony Weiner sexual scandal documentary Weiner.
Directed by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg, the film centers on the disgraced former congressman, whose career went off the rails twice, both times for public revelations about his sex life. The first time, the married politician sent a link to a sexually explicit photograph of himself via his public Twitter account. The second time, which shapes the narrative of Weiner, was during his bid to become mayor of New York City. While making the documentary as a story chronicling the candidate’s comeback, Kriegman and Steinberg had unprecedented access to Weiner and his family and captured a new scandal unfolding, when explicit photos sent by Weiner under the alias “Carlos Danger” to a 22-year-old woman surfaced.
The film will go out through IFC’s Sundance Selects label and be released on May 20. The documentary will make its worldwide TV debut in the fall on Showtime across all platforms.
The film, which promises to be one of the most buzzworthy docs at the festival, will make its world premiere at Sundance on Jan. 24. It is playing in the U.S. Documentary Competition.
The film garnered a great deal of heat from distributors in the past couple of weeks given its political themes and its prospects in an election year. Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, is one of Hillary Clinton’s closest aides and is a visible presence on the campaign trail in Clinton’s bid for the White House. Abedin is said to have a significant role in the documentary, with the filmmakers capturing her reactions to the public betrayal.
Unlike many film distributor/network deals for Sundance movies, the Weiner deal represents a full partnership, and Showtime’s title card will appear before the movie.
Submarine repped the filmmakers.
