Fourteen reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and all fourteen of them positive. Sophia Takal’s acting-studio thriller Act One now has a distributor to match: Oscilloscope Laboratories has taken it for a theatrical release in 2027, Variety reports.
Ella Beatty plays Hannah, a teenage actress who is passed over for a role in her senior-year play and enrolls at Act One Studios, where the instructor Melanie Saunders (Ari Graynor) tells her she has a future. Takal wrote and directed. Nate Mann, Elizabeth Reaser, Sinclair Daniel, Robert Sean Leonard and Tavi Gevinson fill out the cast, and Tandem Pictures, Savage Rose Films and Watermark Media produced.
Where You Know Takal From
Takal directed the 2019 Black Christmas remake for Blumhouse, and before that Always Shine, which sent two actresses to Big Sur and let the resentment between them do the rest. Always Shine is the better of the two.
A Homecoming at Oscilloscope
Oscilloscope released Always Shine in 2016, which makes this a return trip. “Getting to work with them again after Always Shine feels like a homecoming,” Takal said, quoted by Variety.
Act One world premiered at the Tribeca Festival on June 10, 2026, in the Spotlight Narrative section, and runs 104 minutes. Beatty spent this September playing Lizzie Borden in the fourth season of Netflix’s Monster.
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