Dave Franco (center) in 'Idiots.' Courtesy of Independent Film Company Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s movie The Shitheads is getting a new moniker ahead of its theatrical release.
Independent Film Company announced Tuesday that filmmaker Macon Blair‘s road comedy feature will be released theatrically under the title Idiots on Aug. 28. Mason Thames, Peter Dinklage, Kiernan Shipka and Nicholas Braun round out the cast for the movie that premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
Idiots centers on Mark (Franco) and Davis (Jackson), a pair of ne’er-do-wells who are hired to escort a rich teen (Thames) to rehab.
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Blair (The Toxic Avenger) helmed the movie from his own script. He produces the film alongside Franco, Alex Orr, Brandon James, Nathan Klingher, Ford Corbett, Joshua Harris and Mark Fasano. Executive producing are Jackson, Jatin Desai, Greg Freidman, Danny McBride, Jody Hill, David Gordon Green, Jeremy Saulnier, David Gendron, Ali Jazayeri and Thomas Mann.
O’Shea Jackson Jr. (left), Dave Franco and Mason Thames in Idiots, formerly known as The Shitheads. Courtesy of Sundance During a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter at Sundance, the film’s team described feeling attached to the title The Shitheads. Blair recalled pitching the name to Orr before the script had been written and that it made the producer laugh. The director explained, “I got attached to it and became unable to move away from it, so it just stuck.”
Added Franco, “We’ve been waiting for someone along the way to tell us that we can’t do it. But now we’re here. It’s out there. You can’t change it now.”
In his Sundance review of The Shitheads for THR, critic Richard Lawson wrote that the “film develops a magnetic pull” and added, “Blair keeps the strange comedy coming, but he also lets the film dip into moments of contemplative thought, into hardscrabble philosophy.”
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