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Spurlock’s GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD Sold To SPWA

Posted Thursday, January 20th, 2011 - Comments Off on Spurlock’s GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD Sold To SPWA
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SONY PICTURES WORLDWIDE ACQUISITIONS ACQUIRES DOMESTIC RIGHTS TO MORGAN SPURLOCK’STHE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS TO OPEN THE FILM IN APRIL

Culver City, Ca (January 20, 2011) – Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (SPWA) announced today that it has acquired U.S. and Canadian rights to Morgan Spurlock’s The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, a playful yet thought provoking documentary examining the world of product placement, marketing and advertising through a film financed entirely by product placement, marketing and advertising.  Sony Pictures Classics will open the film in North America this April. The announcement was made today by SPWA President Steve Bersch.

Directed by Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me), The Greatest Movie Ever Sold was written by Spurlock and Jeremy Chilnick, and produced by Spurlock, Chilnick and Abbie Hurewitz through Spurlock’s production company, Warrior Poets, alongside Snoot Entertainment producers Keith Calder and Jessica Wu. The deal was made by SPWA’s Scott Shooman and Michael Helfand with CAA. The film is scheduled to premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

From the billboards in Times Square to the barren streets of São Paulo, acclaimed documentarian Morgan Spurlock shines a light on the world of product placement, marketing and advertising through his new film, fully financed by the very product placement the movie explores on screen. With humor and insight, Spurlock unmasks the marketing process, bringing audiences directly into the pitch meetings and marketing presentations which inform our everyday entertainment decisions. From small, family-owned operations to multi-million dollar global brands, Spurlock uses his integrity as currency to sell out to the highest bidder, and garners the kind of large-scale marketing support and promotions customarily reserved for studio blockbusters in an effort to create a first–a “docbuster.”

“We are thrilled to continue Sony’s longstanding relationship with Morgan. He has made an extremely creative and original movie which we think audiences will really embrace,” says Steve Bersch, President, SPWA.

“Sony Pictures is the greatest distributor a film could have.  It’s a dream come true to work with Steve, Tom and Michael on this movie,” noted Spurlock.  “Together, I think we’re going to break new ground.”

SONY PICTURES WORLDWIDE ACQUISITIONS

Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (SPWA) is a Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) company. Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) is a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation. SPE’s global operations encompass motion picture production and distribution; television production and distribution; home entertainment acquisition and distribution; a global channel network; digital content creation and distribution; operation of studio facilities; development of new entertainment products, services and technologies; and distribution of entertainment in more than 140 countries.  Sony Pictures Entertainment can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.sonypictures.com.

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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

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon