“Twinless” Pulled From Sundance Screener Site

Republic Pictures
“The Maze Runner,” “Saturday Night” and “Teen Wolf” star Dylan O’Brien was trending on social media yesterday, but not for the reasons you may expect.

O’Brien and filmmaker James Sweeney have been at the Sundance Film Festival promoting their new work “Twinless” in which O’Brien plays identical twins – the straight and insular Roman and the gay and outgoing Rocky.

When Rocky dies tragically, Rocky’s lover Dennis (Sweeney) feels responsible. He soon befriends Roman in a twin grieving therapy circle. With 26 reviews counted, the film sits at a perfect 100% (8.1/10) on Rotten Tomatoes, and the movie won the Audience Award for U.S. Dramatic and a Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting for O’Brien.

Now, it has also become the second of two movies that has been pulled from the festival’s streaming site due to issues of piracy. The first was the award-winning documentary “Selena y Los Dinos” which was dropped from the Sundance site yesterday after making its way onto TikTok.

“Twinless,” which boasts some spicy intimate scenes, saw those scenes spread across social media. According to Deadline though, it was much more than that which leaked online and has prompted the removal of the film from the screener site. Sundance has issued a statement regarding the removal:

“The film Twinless was a victim of some copyright infringement on various social media platforms, therefore the Festival in partnership with the filmmakers have made the decision to remove the film from the Sundance Film Festival online platform. We regret that online ticket holders will no longer be able to access the film.

For any single ticket holder who has not yet viewed the film, your account will reflect a voucher so you may select another film to screen. We intend to keep the Sundance Film Festival platform fully available for all remaining films.

We acknowledge and regret the disappointment this may cause. However, part of our commitment to advocating for independent filmmakers is ensuring that they can protect the art that they have created — now and in the future. We take copyright infringement extremely seriously and intend to fully cooperate with local, state, and federal law enforcement on all piracy-related issues.”

Sundance requires movies in competition to be part of their online portal which has been running for five years with around a half million people tuning into the portal to watch movies at one point back in 2021. Republic Pictures made “Twinless” which hasn’t been acquired as yet, but multiple buyers are said to be circling the movie.