Dylan O’Brien ‘Twinless’ Wins Over Night 1 of 2025 Festival

Sundance is all about Diamonds in the Rough and James Sweeney’s directing effort, Twinless, in which he stars opposite Dylan O’Brien won the Eccles Audience Night, one of the 2025 editions of the Park City Festival. The Republic Pictures title is on sale.

Sweeney billed the film as a bit of a “Depalma and Grief Drama,” the story about a young man Dennins (played by Sweeney) who tragically loses his rocky gay lover (played by O’Brien). However, Rocky has a twin brother, Roman. Both Roman and Dennis find themselves in a double-challenge group of sweethearts and complex bromance seeds.

The photo represents a return to Sundance for producer David Permut who sold the comedy Jack Black King polka at Netflix, and for O’Brien who was here last year with Ponyboy. Sweeney gave props to Permut who discovered him at Outfest for his film Straight up.

Editorial comes from writer-director-actor James Sweeney. This is his Sundance debut. Sweeney had been working on the script for ten years and sent it to O’Brien in 2020.

“I saw all the Mazerunner movies in theaters,” he joked about how O’Brien got on his radar. “It was actually this YouTube series called Strange city If anyone saw it. He’s in the pilot episode. “

“I felt like he saw my voice and he felt so confident,” he added of his leading man O’Brien, who “took ownership for every emotional shift and beat” of the role of the twins he plays in the film.

“I was always impressed with his range,” Sweeney said, “I felt it would be a different role for him.”

On how he achieved the intriguing pace of the script, Sweeney revealed “they say you write a movie three times – once in the script scene, once on set and once in editing.”

O’Brien added: “I opened this script, and I couldn’t stop.” He further exclaimed that the multihyphenate is “every element of a meticulous filmmaker.”