Steven Soderbergh keeps his iPhone in hand for ‘High Flying Bird’ with André Holland

“Football is fun but it don’t sell sneakers.”

Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh is back after his iPhone-shot thriller Unsane with Claire Foy last year with High Flying Bird, a tale of agents and players scrambling to make money in the middle of basketball lockout and stars André Holland (Moonlight). Call it a grittier Jerry Maguire for the 21st century. It’s one of two Netflix films from Soderbergh we’ll see this year with next being The Laundromat, a star-studded flick about The Panama Papers starring Oscar winners Meryl Streep and Gary Oldman, this fall.

In the midst of a pro basketball lockout, sports agent Ray Burke (André Holland) finds himself caught in the face-off between the league and the players. His career is on the line, but Ray is playing for higher stakes. With only 72 hours to pull off a daring plan, he outmaneuvers all the power-players as he uncovers a loophole that could change the game forever. The outcome raises questions of who owns the game – and who ought to. Directed by Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh (Traffic) from a script by Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight).

High Flying Bird will premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival and then dunk on Netflix on February 8th. It also stars Zazie Beetz, Melvin Gregg, Sonja Sohn, Zachary Quinto, Glenn Fleshler, Jeryl Prescott, Justin Hurtt-Dunkley, Caleb McLaughlin, Bobbi Bordley, Kyle MacLachlan and Bill Duke.

Here is the trailer and poster.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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