A24's Tony receives its first critical notices today, with the distributor positioning Matt Johnson's Bourdain portrait for an August 7 limited release ahead of a nationwide expansion on August 21.
The film follows a single summer in 1975. Anthony Bourdain, 19 years old and recently rejected from a writing program at Vassar, takes a dishwasher job at a restaurant on Cape Cod. Dominic Sessa plays him. Antonio Banderas plays the Brazilian-born chef who becomes his unlikely mentor. The screenplay, co-written by Johnson with Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels, and Lou Howe, draws from Bourdain's 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential.
The Bourdain estate backed the project and offered a clear account of why. "We chose to support Tony because it is not a standard biopic and doesn't attempt to summarize a life," according to a statement reported by The Hollywood Reporter. The film takes that position literally. It arrives at Bourdain before he became Bourdain, at a moment he described in his own memoir in unsparing terms: "a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout."
The ensemble includes Emilia Jones, Leo Woodall, Dagmara Dominczyk, Rich Sommer, and Stavros Halkias. Michael Bauman handled cinematography; Jay McCarrol composed the score. The film runs 106 minutes. Johnson shot it through the second half of 2025, with production wrapping in August. A24 is releasing Tony as late-summer counter-programming: a period character study set against a theatrical landscape still dominated by franchise sequels.