Focus Features has announced that it’ll release Hot Spot, an AI-themed sci-fi thriller reuniting the studio with The Silent Twins director Agnieszka Smoczyńska, in theaters in North America on August 21.
The film is set to open against Black Bear’s crime thriller The Rivals of Amziah King and comedy Spa Weekend, Screen Gems’ Insidious: Out of the Further, and Lionsgate’s action thriller Mutiny starring Jason Statham.
Hot Spot is set in a near future society ruled by sentient A.I., where a private eye investigates a murder case, only to discover a rebel group capable of undermining the digital overlord.
A Polish–Greek co-production penned by Robert Bolesto, the film had Madants and its partners producing on the Polish side, and Neda Film and its partners co-producing for Greece. Bogna Szewczyk-Skupień and Klaudia Śmieja-Rostworowska produced for Madants, along with Gregory Jankilevitsch, with Andrzej Konopka, Noomi Rapace, and Reika Kirishima leading the cast.
Coming off the release of docs The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist and Lorne, the first authorized doc on SNL‘s Lorne Michaels, Focus Features’ slate for the rest of the year also includes Curry Barker’s horror flick Obsession (May 15), the D-Day thriller Pressure (May 29) from Anthony Maras, Hayley Kiyoko’s Girls Like Girls (June 19), Paul Greengrass’ The Uprising (September 11) starring Andrew Garfield, a new take on Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (October 16) starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Robert Egger’s Werwulf (December 25).