John Wilson’s The History of Concrete Debuts at Sundance

Collider reports that John Wilson's feature debut, The History of Concrete, premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and plays like a feature-length episode of his HBO series How To.

Wilson frames a film about concrete through wide-ranging tangents: a writer’s strike class on making Hallmark rom-coms leads him to a Canadian Hallmark warehouse, a trip to Rome to study early concrete, a visit to Ohio for the oldest U.S. concrete street, and detours that include a 3,100-mile race, DMX Christmas music, Chef Boyardee and the world’s smallest street. The review says the film mixes comedy with genuinely moving moments, tracking recurring threads such as a local musician, Jack Macco, the lead singer of a heavy metal band named Nebulus, whose story builds to a moving revelation.

The History of Concrete is listed with a January 22, 2026 release date and a 100-minute runtime. The review praises Wilson’s ability to expand his style to a larger format and its frequent laughs, while noting it never quite reaches the emotional peak of How To’s best episodes and that Wilson’s personal life—he rents apartments to friends and reportedly owes hundreds of thousands because of a New York property—is only lightly explored.

Key Topics

Culture, John Wilson, Sundance Film Festival, Jack Macco, Nebulus