Writer and director Clark Duke’s new movie and screen-acting credit, Arkansas, won’t be bowing before SXSW audiences as initially planned. Lionsgate has its own plans though, with an official trailer now running, and a limited theatrical, VOD, Apple TV+ and Amazon release date set for May 1, followed by a Blu-Ray and DVD rollout on May 5.
In Clark Duke’s directorial debut, Kyle (Liam Hemsworth) and Swin (Clark Duke) live by the orders of an Arkansas-based drug kingpin named Frog (Vince Vaughn), whom they’ve never met. Posing as junior park rangers by day, they operate as low-level drug couriers by night under the watchful eye of Frog’s proxies (John Malkovich and Vivica A. Fox). Swin then settles into his day job by taking up a relationship with Johnna (Eden Brolin) against orders to blend in while Kyle continues to question his night job by trying to figure out who Frog really is. Their world is then upended after one too many inept decisions, and Kyle, Swin, and Johnna find themselves directly in Frog’s crosshairs, who mistakenly sees them as a threat to his empire.
Based on John Brandon’s best-selling book of the same name, ARKANSAS weaves together three decades of Deep South drug trafficking to explore the cycle of violence that turns young men into criminals, and old men into legends.
Duke also produced the pic from a script he co-wrote with Andrew Boonkrong, and with Michael Kenneth Williams also starring.
