Wish I Was Here, Zach Braff’s second feature film is headed to the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. It was announced this morning that the film will be added to the Premieres section of the Park City film festival. Braff’s debut film Garden State, which he wrote and directed as well as starred in alongside Natalie Portman and Peter Sarsgaard, premiered in competition at Sundance in 2004. That film was snagged for distribution by Fox Searchlight Pictures and became a successful indie crossover hit, even winning Braff an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature.
Times have certainly changed for the actor who broke out on the television show Scrubs and was most recently seen (loosely speaking) in Oz: The Great & Powerful. Braff partially funded Wish I Was Here using Kickstarter, directly piggy-backing off the success the film reboot of Veronica Mars achieved on the crowd-funding site. This marks the first time in Sundance history that a crowd-funded film will have its world premiere at the festival.
Wish I Was Here revolves around 35-year-old struggling actor Aiden Bloom, played by Braff, who is in the midst of a mid-life crisis as he struggles to balance his career and family life. Kate Hudson, Josh Gad, Jim Parsons, Ashley Greene and Mandy Patinkin co-star. Braff directs from a script he co-penned with his older brother Adam J. Braff.
Other star-studded films set to premiere next month at Sundance include Frank, an offbeat British comedy about an avant garde rock band featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Fassbender, Laggies, Lynn Shelton’s coming of age story with Keira Knightley and Chloe Grace Moretz, and A Most Wanted Man, Anton Corbijn’s thriller starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams and Robin Wright. The 2014 Sundance Film Festival runs in Park City, Utah, from January 16-26.
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