Festival Favorite ‘Tuner’ Will Kick Off Theatrical Run with the Best Sound Your Ticket Dollars Can Buy

Exclusive: The Daniel Roher-directed film, starring Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman, is getting the Dolby Cinema treatment for a run of pre-release screenings.

Sound is top of mind (and ear) in Daniel Roher’s crowd-pleasing festival favorite, “Tuner,” which follows Leo Woodall as a piano tuner with a unique affliction that both helps and hinders him in his professional work. And when he moves from piano tuning to safe-cracking? Well, let’s just say the heist film is as good as that pitch sounds.

After screening at the Sundance, Telluride, Toronto, and London Film Festivals, Roher’s first narrative feature will soon roll out in theaters everywhere, but first: something for the sound freaks. Black Bear has announced today, exclusively on IndieWire, that “Tuner” will be available for early screenings on Sunday, May 17, only at Dolby Cinema at AMC Theatres.

The film was, per Black Bear, “conceived as a uniquely sound-driven experience and shaped by Academy Award-winning sound designer Johnnie Burn” and aims to “immerse audiences through sound as much as image.” The film will then hit limited release in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, May 22 and nationwide expansion on Friday, May 29.

As I wrote in our summer movie preview, Woodall stars in the film as Niki, “a piano tuner with a condition that makes him sensitive to sound, which also makes him an ideal safecracker. … The film is both a high-style heist film and a warm character study, with a truly hey-this-guy-is-a-movie-star! turn from Woodall. They really don’t make ’em like this anymore, and man, ‘Tuner’ reminds us why they should.”

“‘Tuner’ was conceived as a film that fully embraces cinema’s sensory nature, treating sound — and its absence — as a character integral to the storytelling. Music, silence, and sound design shape Niki’s identity, with the auditory experience drawing parallels between piano tuning and safecracking to immerse audiences in the film’s world. Collaborating with Dolby, Johnnie Burn, Will Bates, and Marius de Vries has been a dream, ensuring that every note is not just heard, but deeply felt in the theatrical experience,” Roher said in a statement.

Added Burn, who previously won the Oscar for Best Sound for 2024’s “The Zone of Interest,” “With ‘Tuner,’ everything is shaped by how the protagonist hears the world, so the audience moves through clarity, distortion and overload in a way that mirrors Niki’s perception. Hearing is involuntary — you can close your eyes, but not your ears. Drawing on my own experience of hyperacusis, the Dolby mix leans into that, so the smallest shifts in sound alter how the world feels, while the larger ones reveal how unstable his sense of the world becomes.”

The film also stars Havana Rose Liu, Tovah Feldshuh, Jean Reno, and Lior Raz. It debuted at Telluride last fall and then went on to play at TIFF, where financier Black Bear announced it would also distribute it.  

Ticket holders who turn out for the early screenings will receive a free, limited-edition replica of the Dustin Hoffman bobblehead from the film, while supplies last. In addition, Burn will participate in select Q&As in New York on May 17, while composer Will Bates and editor Greg O’Bryant will appear at select Los Angeles screenings.

“Tuner” will be released in Dolby Cinemas nationwide. You can click here for tickets to the early May 17 Dolby screenings, as well as tickets for showtimes starting on May 22.