One of the more exciting films that’ll debut at the Sundance Film Festival this year is “The Nest,” the sophomore feature from Sean Durkin, who made a splash at the same festival in 2011 with “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” one of the most riveting and assured debut features in recent memory. Thankfully, Durkin is already setting up his next feature, and this new film focuses on the fascinating, uniquely tragic story of the Von Erich wrestling family. Bring it on.
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“I’m very excited about this one,” Durkin told Deadline about the film (which will be produced by Tessa Ross and Juliette Howell, along with BBC Films.). “It’s another family portrait, about a wrestling family who revolutionized the sport and then suffered tragedy.” If you don’t know about the Von Erich family, we suggest the amazing “The Last of the Von Erichs” episode of Viceland documentary series “Dark Side of the Ring,” but the gist of it is that they were a family of wrestlers who appeared in national and local leagues in the 1960s and ‘70s and are under a suggested “curse” that saw the family patriarch Fritz outlive five of his six sons.
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It’s a really intriguing story, full of unstable family dynamics, violence, and unparalleled athleticism and Durkin, who was out of the spotlight for many years following the reception to “Martha Marcy May Marlene” (he directed a British miniseries starring Rory Kinnear and Sean Harris that nobody saw), seems like the perfect filmmaker to bring this epic family saga to the big screen.