AMC will distribute Palin film

Politico reports

The Undefeated, ” a flattering new documentary about Sarah Palin, has inked a distribution deal with North America’s second-largest movie theater chain for a July 15 release.

AMC Theatres will show “The Undefeated” in markets including Dallas, Denver, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Fla., Atlanta, Orange County, Calif., Phoenix, Houston, Indianapolis and Kansas City, Mo., according to the news release from the production company, Victory Film Group.

To drum up buzz, the filmmakers also plan to take “The Undefeated” to the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina for one-night showings. But the writer-director, Steve Bannon, says the film’s goal is to make money, not get Palin elected to anything. He believes the film’s up-from-obscurity narrative will have wide appeal to nonpolitical people.

Victory Film Group’s co-founder, Glenn Bracken Evans, echoed that sentiment in the news release.

“The documentary is made to be seen on a big screen,” he said. “With its story of a small-town girl who, against all odds, rises to the pinnacles of American government, the film plays with all the drama of a “Rocky” picture, only with a woman as the central figure and with politics instead of boxing.”

The film, which Palin has seen but has no involvement with, casts the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee as the hero and epitome of the tea party movement — an ordinary citizen stirred to action to restore common sense to government.

It leaves out or downplays many of the controversies that have dogged Palin. Bannon said they didn’t fit into the story the film sought to tell.

The privately owned, Kansas City-based AMC operates 360 theaters with 5,128 screens in the U.S. and Canada.