Seth Rogen Comedy ‘An American Pickle’ Jumps From Sony To HBO Max

Deadline has confirmed that the Seth Rogen/Point Grey Pictures comedy An American Pickle is heading to HBO Max. I’m informed that a release date for the movie remains TBD even though the service is launching May 27.

WarnerMedia has taken global rights to the feature, which stars Rogen in dual roles, from Sony. The Culver City studio was set to open the feature later this year, but they’ve moved a large number of pics on their feature slate to 2021 (only three theatrical titles remain for Sony this year: Monster Hunter, Connected and Happiest Season). In the wake of exhibition’s shutdown out of safety for COVID-19, a number of smaller, mid-sized films are segueing to streaming with theatrical distributors selling them off, i.e., STX’s My Spy to Amazon, and Paramount/MRC’s The Lovebirds to Netflix.

Pic is a feature adaptation of the 2013 New Yorker series “Sell Out” by Simon Rich, who also wrote the script and executive produced with Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Point Grey execs Alex McAtee and Ted Gidlow. Brandon Trost directs.

An American Pickle follows an immigrant worker (played by Rogen) at a pickle factory who is accidentally preserved for 100 years and wakes up in modern-day Brooklyn. He learns his only surviving relative is his great grandson (also portrayed by Rogen), a computer coder he can’t connect with.