The Script That Became The Only Living Pickpocket in New York

Noah Segan's The Only Living Pickpocket in New York began with a script he showed to Rian Johnson, the director of Knives Out, in 2018. Segan described that origin in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on October 30, 2026, as the film expanded into more cinemas.

The two men had known each other for years. Segan first met Johnson in 2003, when he was cast in Johnson's feature debut, Brick. The connection later reached the franchise itself. Segan is the only actor besides Daniel Craig who visibly appears in all three Knives Out films, each time as a different character.

According to the same trade report, Johnson told Segan that if Knives Out went well, he might start producing films, and Pickpocket was the kind of movie he could produce. Johnson and Ram Bergman developed the project under their T-Street Productions banner. Johnson also serves as executive producer.

The franchise has been a large earner. Knives Out grossed $312 million against a $40 million budget, The Hollywood Reporter reported. The same outlet reported that Netflix offered Johnson, Bergman and Craig nearly half a billion dollars for two more Knives Out chapters.

Segan wrote Pickpocket and another script, Blood Relatives, within six months in 2017, after the birth of his first child. The new film is set and shot in modern-day New York City. It follows a pickpocket whose line of work has become obsolete in the digital age, when fewer people carry wallets and phones do most of the paying.

Its route to audiences ran through several festivals. The Hollywood Reporter included the film among its critics' picks for the best films of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in January. It was then presented as a Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, according to TIFF's listing. The film runs 88 minutes and is a 2026 United States production in English. John Turturro has a role in the cast.

Earlier release plans were also reported. The Playlist said in August that the film would open on October 16 in Los Angeles and New York. The later expansion covered in October shows how a limited opening can grow into a wider theatrical run.

There is a neat irony in a story about a trade the digital age has made obsolete reaching screens through the most old-fashioned route going, a theatrical run. Segan's path also shows how a friendship from an early film set, begun in 2003, can lead to a script, then a producer's backing, more than two decades on.