UTA Boards David Gordon Green Exec Produced ‘Hippo’ by Mark H. Rapaport (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Marta Balaga UTA has boarded sales on Mark H. Rapaport’s Fantasia premiere “Hippo.” “We are very excited for this one,” said UTA’s Billy Offer, admitting a number of distributors have already expressed interest. “It’s so oddly relatable and so singular in its approach, and vision, that I really wanted to help make sure it got the right platform to shine.

Fantasia is a perfect launchpad for this type of film.”   Produced by Kinematics in association with Rough House Pictures, it counts Danny McBride and David Gordon Green among its executive producers.  “Hippo’s’ strange and dark humor is quintessential viewing and a wonderful reminder of why we all got into indie filmmaking in the first place,” Gordon Green told Variety, calling it “a brilliant feature debut.” In the film, Hippo (Kimball Farley, who also co-wrote the script) and his adopted sister Buttercup (Lilla Kizlinger) live in complete isolation with their unstable mother.

But Buttercup keeps dreaming of having a child of her own, even though neither of them really knows what sex is.  “The Rough House guys were a godsend, because it’s a tiny movie.

We shot in my grandmother’s house!,” admits Rapaport. “It’s a little slice of Americana, a little ‘Napoleon Dynamite’-ish and I think that’s what they were drawn to.