Apple has secured worldwide rights to Cooper Raiff's Cha Cha Real Smooth for about $15 million, making it the biggest deal of the 2022 Virtual Sundance Film Festival. Since its January 23 premiere in the US Dramatic Competition category, the streamer has been the front runner for the film.

The film is Raiff's follow-up to his SXSW Grand Jury Prize–winning first feature Shithouse, which he won in 2020. He plays a haphazard college graduate in New Jersey who finds himself in over his head in a relationship with a young mother and her autistic adolescent daughter while working as a party starter for his younger brother's friends' bar and bat mitzvahs. The film, which was co-financed by Picturestart and Endeavor Content, is a great crowd-pleaser. Raiff, Dakota Johnson, Leslie Mann, Brad Garrett, Vanessa Burghardt, Raul Castillo, and Evan Assante are among the cast members.

With Johnson, Ro Donnelly, Erik Feig, and Jessica Switch, Raiff developed the script and produced it. Jeff Valeri, Shayne Fiske Goldner, and Julia Hammer serve as executive producers.

ICM Partners, WME, and Endeavor Content negotiated the arrangement.

It's less than the $25 million Apple spent for CODA at Sundance last year, which remains the festival's record. It tops the $7.5 million agreement for Good Luck, Leo Grande that Searchlight/Hulu announced today. That one was solely for the protection of American rights.