The comedy A.C.O.D., which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year to positive reviews, has been picked up for distribution by The Film Arcade and Paramount Home Media.  The title stands for “Adult Children of Divorce” and the Stuart Zicherman-directed film centers on a guy (Adam Scott) who has been caught in his parents’ (Richard Jenkins and Catherine O’Hara) ugly divorce for the past twenty years, and matters become even worse when his brother gets engaged.  Then the details of the feud are revealed in a definitive new book on children of divorce.

I caught the film at Sundance (read Matt’s review here) and it’s a solid comedy with a big heart, and as a fellow A.C.O.D. it hit really close to home for me in quite a few parts.  It also features scene-stealing performances by Catherine O’Hara and Richard Jenkins, with other nice turns from Clark Duke, Amy Poehler, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.  The Film Arcade will be handling theatrical distribution in North America, while Paramount Home Media will manage domestic home entertainment, television licensing and digital distribution, as well as international distribution.  Hit the jump for the press release.

In his feature directorial debut, A.C.O.D., Stu Zicherman has taken the premise for the episode of a sitcom, and turned it into a film that’s not only funny, but also surprisingly relatable for audience members represented by the title’s acronym, “Adult Children of Divorce”.  Speaking as an A.C.O.D., my parents never had the comical, over-the top fights featured in the movie, but Zicherman and co-writer Ben Karlin manage to work in a strong, emotional center to a comedy that works in broad strokes.  The movie may share the same plotline as sitcom episode, but thanks to its excellent cast and willingness to push its protagonist to emotionally unpleasant places, A.C.O.D. works for kids from broken and unbroken homes alike.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead has joined Adam Scott, Jane Lynch, and Richard Jenkins in the comedy A.C.O.D. The title stands for “Adult Children of Divorce”, and the plot centers on a guy (Scott) who has been caught in his parents’ ugly divorce of the past twenty years, and matters become even worse when his brother gets engaged.  Then the details of the feud are revealed in a definitive new book on children of divorce.  According to Deadline, Winstead will be the rock and long-time girlfriend of Scott’s character.  Stuart Zicherman will make his directing debut on a script he co-wrote with Ben Karlin (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart).

Winstead gave one of the more buzzed-about performances coming out Sundance this year with her captivating dramatic turn as an alcoholic in Smashed, but she’s been crushing it in movies for a while now.  She’s convincingly played a bad-ass in The Thing, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and Live Free or Die Hard, and I’m excited to see how she’ll play off Scott, Jenkins, and Lynch in a comedy.  Winstead will next be seen playing Mary Todd Lincoln in the action flick Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.