Sundance Hit ‘Fair Play’ Sold for a Huge $20 Million. Is It Worth It?

All’s fair in love, war, and corporate finance, or so contends Fair Play, Chloe Domont’s prickly thriller about a couple whose efforts to stay together are complicated by their ambitious industry, workplace, and hearts. A breakout performance by Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor helps turn the writer/director’s debut feature—which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival—into an entertainingly nasty bit of business whose main lesson is one its protagonist knows well, if fails to heed: Don’t shit where you eat.

The film, which had hot word-of-mouth on the ground in Park City this last week, made headlines on Monday when it was scooped up by Netflix for a whopping $20 million, making it the biggest purchase of this year’s festival—and one of the highest price tags in the entire history of Sunance. With all the cash riding on it (the last film to fetch over $20 million was CODA, which went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars), the question remains: Is it any good? Or, rather, worth that much money?

In the Manhattan office of investment management firm One Crest Capitol, Emily (Dynevor) overhears scuttlebutt that Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) is first in line to nab the prime portfolio manager job recently vacated by a tearful man who was escorted out of the building by security—much to the amusement of his cold-hearted colleagues. Emily tells Luke about this potentially phenomenal news because, as Fair Play’s initial scenes have revealed, they’re an item and can barely keep their hands off each other.

Read more at The Daily Beast.