“King Richard” is ruling Telluride. Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Warner Bros. biopic about Richard Williams, the hard-driving father of straight-outta-Compton tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, played to a packed house Friday afternoon, building Best Actor buzz for its star and producer, Will Smith. He held the rights to the tennis duo’s story, but it was Jada Pinkett-Smith who suggested her husband meet with Green after she served on the Sundance jury in 2018, the year that the young director broke out with “Monsters and Men.”

This full-bodied performance marks Smith’s best shot at an Oscar in years. He’s been nominated twice, both for roles in which he had to fully inhabit living, breathing people: Boxer Muhammad Ali in Michael Mann’s “Ali” in 2002, and Chris Gardner, a man who rose from homelessness to become a stockbroker and motivational speaker, in Gabrielle Muccino’s 2007 “The Pursuit of Happyness.