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HBO Acquires Sundance Opener Project Nim Pre-Fest

Posted Tuesday, January 18th, 2011 - Comments Off on HBO Acquires Sundance Opener Project Nim Pre-Fest
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HBO Acquires All Domestic Rights To
PROJECT NIM
2011 Sundance Film Festival Opener
From Oscar®-Winning Filmmakers of MAN ON WIRE

New York, NY (Jan. 18, 2011) – HBO has acquired all U.S. rights, including theatrical, video and broadcast, to PROJECT NIM, the opening night film of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, it was announced today by Sheila Nevins, president of HBO Documentary Films.

From producer Simon Chinn and director James Marsh, the Oscar®-winning team behind MAN ON WIRE (Sundance ’08 Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award), comes the extraordinary story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment that aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child.

 Following Nim’s journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature—and indeed our own—is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.

The deal was brokered by Josh Braun of Submarine Entertainment and HBO Documentary Films. HBO will be actively seeking U.S. theatrical and DVD distribution at Sundance, and will be working with Submarine and Icon Entertainment International (IEI) on these negotiations.

HBO Documentary Films, BBC Films and the UK Film Council present a Red Box Films Production in association with Passion Pictures.

Sundance Screenings:

Thursday, Jan. 20, 9:30 pm – Egyptian Theatre
PRESS – Thursday, Jan. 20, 10:00 pm – Yarrow Hotel Theatre
Friday, Jan. 21, 6:00 pm –Sundance Resort
Saturday, Jan. 22, 6:30 pm – Peery’s Egyptian Theater, Ogden
Sunday, Jan. 23, 11:30 am – Prospector Square Theatre
Wednesday, Jan. 26, 9:00 am – Yarrow Hotel Theatre
Friday, Jan. 28, 3:30 pm – Holiday Village II

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

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~ David Simon