HBO Acquires New Sydney Sweeney Movie Reality

One of Sydney Sweeney’s latest projects has found a home at HBO. On Friday, reports confirmed that HBO Films has closed a deal for the U.S. rights to Reality, a new docudrama film that stars Sweeney. While a release date for the film, which just premiered to rave reviews at the Berlin Film Festival, has not been set, reports indicate that it will happen “in the near future” so the project can be considered for the next Emmy Awards. This will be Sweeney’s third major collaboration with HBO, after breakout roles in Euphoria and the first season of The White Lotus.

Directed by Tina Satter, the film is a docudrama based on the real-life story of Reality Winner, a woman who became a whistleblower in the controversy surrounding Russian interference in the United States’ 2016 presidential election. Before this film adaptation, Satter developed it as a Broadway play titled Is This a Room.

What is Reality about?

Reality follows Reality Winner (played by Sweeney), a woman convicted of leaking a confidential report on Russian election interference to the media. The film contains verbatim dialogue from the unedited transcript of a FBI audio recording, capturing a tense 90 minutes as the FBI interrogates Winner at her home in 2017. The whistleblower — a former U.S. Air Force member and National Security Agency translator — was sentenced to five years in prison.

The film also stars Josh Hamilton, Marchant Davis, Benny Elledge, and John Way.

What are Sydney Sweeney’s next movies?

In addition to the upcoming Sony’s Spider-Man Universe movie Madame Web, Sweeney is set to star in a currently-untitled romantic comedy alongside Top Gun: Maverick‘s Glen Powell and X-Men: Apocalypse‘s Alexandra Shipp. She is also poised to star in and executive produce a film reboot of Barbarella. A new adaptation of Jean-Claude Forest’s cult-classic sci-fi comic book series into development, it would be the second film incarnation after the Jane Fonda-led 1968 movie.

“I’m really excited to serve all the fits,” Sweeney explained in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight. “But also, just it’s such an iconic, fun character. And I want to keep that fun alive through Barbarella. So, I’m excited for everyone to see it.”

What do you think of HBO acquiring the rights to Reality? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

h/t: Deadline