Photos Courtesy of Black Bear No matter which way you look at it, The Rivals of Amziah King will hit select theaters this Friday feeling very long-awaited. The star, Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey, chose the indie as the one to bring him back to acting after a five-year hiatus from live-action productions. The director, Andrew Patterson, spent years developing the project as the follow-up to his celebrated 2019 debut, The Vast of Night. And then there’s the movie itself — which shot back in 2023, finally premiered at South by Southwest in the spring of 2025, and a year and a half later, is at last set for release via its production company and nascent distributor, Black Bear. Patterson declines to say much about the delay, except to imply: This release feels hard-earned.
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That delay also explains why McConaughey has had other projects that filmed later on, like Paul Greengrass’ Oscar-nominated The Lost Bus, already reach the public. But watch Amziah King and the actor’s fresh energy remains unmistakable. The Texas native, who’d taken a break from Hollywood to focus on writing several books, gives a magnetic performance as the film’s titular honeymaker, born-again Christian and bluegrass musician — charming and mysterious and suffused with longing. He’s paired opposite a breakout star in Angelina LookingGlass, portraying Kateri, who lived with Amziah as his foster daughter for a few years before life pulled them apart. In adulthood and in crisis, she’s drawn back to him.
That only begins to describe the wild ride of The Rivals of Amziah King, which digs deep into the logistics (and underbelly) of the honey business, the texture of life in rural Oklahoma, the ways in which a narrative can turn on its head in an instant. Indeed, there are twists aplenty in Patterson’s sophomore feature, both in what happens in the story and in how the filmmaker chooses to tell it. There’s no sense in giving away any more. But after so many years of waiting, Patterson and McConaughey have plenty to say about it all.
Owen Teague with Matthew McConaughey in The Rivals of Amziah King. I’m curious how you’re feeling now that release is finally around the corner. It’s been three years since you shot this, right?
ANDREW PATTERSON Yeah. There was a good chunk of time from a post standpoint and then an even longer chunk of time from the moment that the company that financed it decided to become the studio to distribute it. I was very, very glad and honored that they wanted to start up a whole company to put things into theaters because that was overdue.
It’s an ambitious, very specific conceit for a movie. What was the genesis and how did it get to Matthew from there?
PATTERSON It was something that I wanted to go out and make quickly after I shot Vast of Night. I looked around at the resources and people I had access to, and one of my closest friends owned a honey plant. I wanted to make a movie about a Native American female that takes over a narrative and essentially becomes the protagonist. It literally came from what I had access to and who I knew and what I wanted to make, inside my own resources and network. We went through the pandemic, and that slowed down the direction on this one. I didn’t want to make a movie with a whole lot of social distancing and parameters and things that made my filmmaking difficult. So I ended up being slower to pull this one out and go out and make it. McConaughey wasn’t available initially — and eventually he was. When he read it, he agreed to do it. And so that’s the short version of how it all got from an idea to the desk of Matthew as it were.
MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY I remember looking at it and just going, “What an original time, place, space, and language. Oh man, there’s such an innocence to this.” It was poetic, it was musical, it was funny as shit, and it was a story for the underdogs. I felt like I knew the world and I wanted to be where it was. I saw Andrew’s film, met with him — we were supposed to meet for one hour, ended up being about three or four hours — and we met hearts and minds. I said, “Let’s go on the adventure.” And there we went.
PATTERSON We actually did have a few other actors interested in the role, awesome actors that would’ve brought a different entire thing to the work. You know how there’s a list? When a movie’s coming together, there’s like, “Here’s who we’d be willing to make it with.” I would say Matthew was almost above the list — you had two or three that were sort of like, “Well, sure, but they would never do it.” That was sort of where Matthew was, and interestingly enough, another name that took a year to get to it — it was Denzel [Washington]. He read it and really loved it, but wanted to have some creative control that I didn’t see a way around in the narrative. That was before Matthew was available. Then Matthew became available, and that was not necessarily something I saw coming. He was as perfectly fit for the role as anybody would ever have been, and then became the role in a way that nobody ever could have.
McConaughey with Angelina LookingGlass. At that point, Matthew, were you reading many scripts? This is the first movie you’d made in several years.
MCCONAUGHEY I was, but nothing had really tickled me or got under my skin like this one did. I wasn’t reading five scripts a day or anything, but I was consciously open and looking for the right thing to do. I said, “You know what? That’s an original feather in the cap. We can go pull that off.” I just saw him as a king of a man, a father, a shepherd, leader of misfits. Ultimately, and I figured this out after shooting, he was a giver of belonging. It’s really what he did. I loved all that, all those aspects about him and the world that he was in. Not that I choose roles philanthropically or anything, but I was like, “Man, the world could use some innocence, some love, and some humor — and I could too. So let’s go do it.”
PATTERSON What was fascinating to me was meeting your mom, Matthew, and how much she actually embodied characteristics that you ended up putting into the role of Amziah. The first night I met her, she was like, “I want you to know you belong here. This is something you and Matthew are going to do that’s special.” I remember her grabbing my hands and grabbing me and looking me in the eye and making sure I knew that I belonged.
Did you feel your mom in there, Matthew, in Amziah?
MCCONAUGHEY In ways I can’t even tell you. I felt my dad too. One of my favorite things about my mom and my dad is they’ll always go for the underdog. They always bring the underdog in, whether it’s adopted kids, whether it’s wayward kids, whether it was the little kid named Rudy who ran track at Uvalde High School, whose legs were six inches shorter than anybody else. And there was no way he could win the mile. But my dad, if he placed, would always take him out to dinner and give him a $20 bill. The only fights I got in high school were taking up for the underdog, taking up for the runt who everyone picked on — or taking up for my friend Betty, who was the one gothic lesbian in school who people were picking on. I got that from mom and dad. I know I did. My brothers are the same way, looking out for people on the fringes and bringing them up to the front row and putting them in the damn spotlight and making them the star, the center of the circle, and the star of the damn show.
This movie does that, certainly. Andrew, how did you find Angelina LookingGlass?
PATTERSON We had an incredible Native American casting director, Angelique Midthunder, come on just to find Kateri. She probably sought out 200, 300 young women. A lot of them, Angelique would’ve seen them submit a tape four, five, six years ago and say, “Hey, you’re really special. Keep doing this.” Or she would see somebody on social media and nudge them and say, “You have a very special look in your eye. Maybe you should consider performing.” She had done that with Angelina LookingGlass. Angelique sent us 100 auditions in the first batch and then maybe another 40 in the second batch, and I told her, “I don’t see anybody yet that’s jumping out at me.” The third group is where Angelina came in. She had the most mesmerizing gaze of anybody I had seen come through. Then Angelina and I worked together over the next three or four months to develop how she would play Kateri.
Behind the scenes of The Rivals of Amziah King. It’s a big movie for, I’d imagine, a tight budget. What were the conditions of the shoot like — getting this thing done?
PATTERSON We made a movie out in the elements. We were always around bees. We were always getting shut down for lightning strikes and weather. We were always navigating schedules and availabilities. In the end, you got this big, bright, sunny movie that I think represents a lot of the world that we lived in, that Matthew and I at least lived in, growing up in the middle of the country. Matthew and I got into it. We were in each other’s business 15, 16 hours a day for production.
MCCONAUGHEY It’s fair to say it wasn’t a small, contained, independent movie. It had big sets, it had multiple characters. You had to cover a lot of space. Andrew had to make a lot of choices before production, during production, when magic would happen, and all in a limited amount of hours to get it done. One of the great scenes in the movie is when all the musicians come over to Amziah’s house and they make literally what we were just talking about, make Kateri the center of the circle — the center of attention. That was not really improvised, but it took its own life and built into a beautiful three-act scene in itself.
“The language and the stories that he tell all come from my mind,” writer-director Andrew Patterson says of Amziah King. “The way he uses his words was all my construct.” Andrew, earlier you alluded to the film’s fascinating, surprising storytelling pivot. We won’t spoil anything here, but on a screenwriting level, how did you go about structuring that and considering how it’d play onscreen?
PATTERSON It is something that you have seen done in narrative in particular at large. And by that I mean novels, opera — you even see it done inside of pop songs where there’s a giant shift. There’s more precedent for narrative fluidity than usually is allowed inside of the studio system. I knew it needed to be an independent film to be able to play with different types of genres and go from shifting perspectives in the narrative. I understand that it’s not going to be for everyone…but I’ve always had more faith in the viewers being able to handle narrative shifts. And let me be very clear. When I wrote this script, I was a million miles away from Hollywood, and maybe 10 million miles away from a Matthew McConaughey. So it was important to me, even after we realized Matthew was going to do the role, to stick to my guns creatively, to never sway from what I knew the movie could do and let it be what it was originally written to be.
Andrew, what was the post-production process like? I was really struck by the way you put this together, and clearly a lot went into that part of the filmmaking.
PATTERSON I would rather leave that for another day. I’d rather just not talk about that part of it. It was complicated and we got the movie there and that’s what I’m grateful for.
OK. Can I ask why?
PATTERSON There were different visions, and in the end, mine was the one that won out. So I’m very glad and grateful for that.
Kurt Russell as Dob McCoy, a power player in the honey business. Matthew, what is the importance and challenge for you of making films of this scale right now? You’ve made movies of all kinds, so it’s interesting to me that you returned to acting in a project like this.
MCCONAUGHEY Am I objective enough to sit there and think, with my career, “Oh, this might be the right kind of movie to do at this time?” Yeah. Am I right about all of them? I don’t know, but I’m cognizant of it. “It could be a good movie, no one’s probably going to see it,” or “This could be a big movie.” You measure those things all the time, not that we’re always right. I want to go where I can have an experience. Whose shoes can I put on where I want to inhabit that spirit of that character for that amount of time where I’m going to enjoy the work that we do to get it done?
Independent films have always been — sometimes you get one that pops over on the side, sometimes they don’t. I chose this in place of other movies I could have done for a whole lot more money. When I’m making a creative decision — we’re talking about the love of underdogs, and with an independent, you’re inherently loving an underdog just to do one. See if you can pull it off. There’s great fun in the tension, and great freedom in the tension, that comes with an independent, when you have less time and less money and you’ve got to get it done. That’s a wild bull to ride. It can’t be overly conscientious. You don’t have the time for it to be. It can’t be overly precious. You ain’t got time for it to be. That’s fun for me because my least favorite place to be on set is in my trailer.
Andrew, how do you think the landscape has changed from your first film to this one?
PATTERSON To be honest, I’m a little more black-and-white than Matthew is about the importance of independent film. It is the lifeblood of this industry. I believe that you need the smaller things swiping at the tail of the factory. You need people challenging story norms. You need people out there pushing the boundaries. We’re almost in an interesting little renaissance right now after watching the movies that came out in May from A24 and Focus that were small, that outperformed everything else this summer. That feels a little bit to me like Bonnie and Clyde. That feels a little bit to me like Easy Rider. I’ve been saying for years, we need an Easy Rider. We need something to get out and wake everyone up and shake the studios up and start making something that takes chances. I think we might’ve just gotten it with those movies, and I’m excited to be a part of that group.
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