A24’s New Biopic Movie Debuts With Near-Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score

A24’s upcoming Anthony Bourdain biopic, Tony, just made its debut on Rotten Tomatoes with an impressive score from critics.

Bourdain was a chef who hosted food and travel shows, including Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, and released books like Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. He died by suicide in June 2018 at the age of 61.

Eight years later, filmmaker Matt Johnson has directed a biopic about Bourdain. Tony, which comes out in August, currently has a nearly perfect critic score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Early reviews claim that fans of the chef will enjoy seeing Bourdain’s early life in Massachusetts depicted on screen.

The film is profound and heartfelt, and exudes warmth, emotional depth and relatability. Some critics even said that one doesn’t have to know much (if anything) about Bourdain’s life to enjoy Tony.

ScreenRant‘s Alex Harrison reviewed Tony and gave it a rating of 8/10.

Before Tony, filmmaker Matt Johnson had directed movies like The Dirties, Operation Avalanche, BlackBerry and Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie; created the series Nirvanna the Band the Show; and even acted in his own projects. Over the years, he’s won multiple film festival and critic association awards.

Johnson co-wrote the script for Tony with Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels and Lou Howe, and served as a producer with Miller, Tim White and Trevor White.

Dominic Sessa, whose previous credits include Now You See Me: Now You Don’t and Oh. What. Fun., plays Bourdain in Tony, which also stars Emilia Jones, Dagmara Domińczyk, Rich Sommer, Stavros Halkias, Leo Woodall, Antonio Banderas, Michael Jibrin, Caroline Portu, Monica Raymund and Ava Davey-Bissett.

Production and distribution company A24 already found huge success this year with the release of Kane Parsons’ first feature-length film Backrooms, based on his web series and the creepypasta of the same name. The horror movie grossed $389.7 million at the box office and is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a critic score of 87%.

A24’s Marty Supreme, released last year, gained attention with several Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe win for Timothée Chalamet. Over the years, they’ve also produced Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Whale, Priscilla, Civil War, The Brutalist, Babygirl, Materialists, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and The Drama.

Now A24 is days away from releasing Tony, with Sessa stepping into shoes that may be hard to fill, but critics are assuring Bourdain’s fans that the biopic is worth the trip to the movie theater.

Tony will be released in select theaters on Friday, August 7 and then have a wide release on August 21.

Release Date

August 7, 2026

Runtime

106 minutes

Director

Matt Johnson

Writers

Todd Bartels, Matthew Miller, Matt Johnson, Lou Howe

Producers

Chris Stinson, Matthew Miller, Lou Howe, Tim White, Trevor White, Todd Bartels, Kim Witherspoon