Movies

A24 Sets 'Minari' On Demand Release Date In Late February

Minari on demand release
By Ben Pearson

If you read a handful of "best of the year" lists as 2020 was coming to a close, chances are probably pretty high that you saw director Lee Isaac Chung's Minari pop up multiple times. The beloved drama has been winning hearts since premiering at last year's Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Grand Jury prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Awards, and now we finally know when the film will be making its way to VOD.

We already knew that A24, the company behind the movie, planned to release the film in theaters on February 12, 2021. But in a new tweet today, the company announced in the most adorable way possible that a Minari on demand release date has been carved out, too: February 26, 2021.

Here's the synopsis for the film:

A tender and sweeping story about what roots us, Minari follows a Korean-American family that moves to a tiny Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. The family home changes completely with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed, but incredibly loving grandmother. Amidst the instability and challenges of this new life in the rugged Ozarks, Minari shows the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.

Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead, Burning) stars as the patriarch of the central family, whose ideas about the American Dream are tested when his family life suddenly becomes more complicated. He stands a good chance at becoming the first Asian-American man to be nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars, and while he's the central focus of the film, his co-stars are just as good. Yeri Han, Will Patton, Noel Kate Cho, Yuh-Jung Youn, and breakout child actor Alan Kim round out the cast, and there is not a single missed note in any of their performances. The simple, quiet story is elegantly expressed by writer/director Lee Isaac Chung, and we ranked the movie as one of the best of 2020 (despite its odd release rollout).

There's also a whole rigamarole about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the laughably small and often-embarrassing collection of international writers who vote on Golden Globes, deciding that Minari is ineligible for the Best Drama or Best Comedy/Musical category because a majority of the film's dialogue is spoken in Korean. The voting body didn't make that decision for Inglourious Basterds several years ago, despite much of that film's dialogue being in non-English languages, so folks are rightfully disappointed about the double standard being applied here. But what matters is that the film will soon be available for everyone to watch safely from their own homes as the pandemic continues.

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