Focus Features will be giving B.J. Novak‘s feature directorial debut, the darkly comic thriller Vengeance, a theatrical release on July 29th, and today we’re proud to share an EXCLUSIVE clip from the film that shows how the story gets rolling. Check it out in the embed above!
Written by and starring Novak, Vengeance is about
Ben Manalowitz, a journalist and podcaster who travels from New York City to West Texas to investigate the death of a girl he was hooking up with.
Novak stars in the film as Ben Manalowitz, and in the clip at the top of this article it appears that he didn’t initially travel to Texas with the idea of investigating the death. The idea of turning this situation into a story he can tell the world doesn’t come up until he’s already in Texas. Novak built a solid supporting cast around himself that includes Issa Rae (Insecure), Ashton Kutcher (The Ranch), Boyd Holbrook (The Predator), J. Smith-Cameron (Succession), Dove Cameron (Liv and Maddie), and Isabella Amara (Nashville).
Vengeance is coming to us from Blumhouse Productions, one of the biggest names in the horror genre these days. Blumhouse’s Jason Blum produced the film with Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath of Divide/Conquer. Novak served as executive producer with Leigh Kilton-Smith and Chris Warner.
Novak is best known for playing the role of Ryan Howard on over 150 episodes of The Office. While Vengeance is the first movie he has directed, he did previously direct episodes of The Office, as well as the shows The Mindy Project and The Premise. He also worked as a writer on all of those shows, and on Raising Dad. Some episodes he wrote of The Office were later adapted into episodes of the short-lived Finnish version of the series, Konttori.
Are you looking forward to watching Vengeance later this month? Let us know by leaving a comment below. The movie looks interesting to me, so I will definitely be checking it out as soon as possible.