By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES ACQUIRES “BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD”

Posted Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 - Comments Off on FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES ACQUIRES “BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD”
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For Immediate Release

Specialty Arm Acquires U. S. Rights

PARK CITY, UT January 24, 2012 – Fox Searchlight Pictures Presidents Stephen Gilula and Nancy Utley announced today that the company has acquired U. S. rights to the fantastical drama BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD. Directed by Benh Zeitlin  and written by Lucy Alibar and Zeitlin, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD stars Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry.  The film was produced by Michael Gottwald, Dan Janvey and Josh Penn.  Philipp Engelhorn, Paul Mezey and Michael Raisler are executive producers.  The film is scheduled to be released in 2012.

“In his feature film debut, Benh Zeitlin has crafted a visually stunning and deeply poetic film that captured our hearts.  The amazing performances by newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry are a wonder to behold,” said Utley and Gilula.

“The making of ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ was defined by a deliberate, collaborative process and we’re thrilled that Fox Searchlight Pictures has embraced the spirit of the film,” said Gottwald, Janvey and Penn.

“We were looking for a partner who would unleash our film on the world with the same energy and ferocity with which we made it.  Fox Searchlight came to the table with big hearts and fierce resolve, they’re a perfect match for the project,” said Zeitlin.

In a forgotten but defiant bayou community cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee, a six old girl exists on the brink of orphanhood.  Buoyed by her childish optimism and extraordinary imagination, she believes that the natural world is in balance with the universe until a fierce storm changes her reality.  Desperate to repair the structure of her world in order to save her ailing father and sinking home, this tiny hero must learn to survive unstoppable catastrophes of epic proportions.

The deal was brokered by Fox Searchlight’s Vice President of Acquisitions Ray Strache, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Acquisitions Tony Safford and Senior Vice President of Business Affairs Megan O’Brien with WME Global’s Graham Taylor and Mark Anker and Andre Des Rochers of Gray Krauss Stratford Des Rochers LLP on behalf of the filmmakers.

Fox Searchlight Pictures is a specialty film company that both finances and acquires motion pictures.  It has its own marketing and distribution operations, and its films are distributed internationally by Twentieth Century Fox.  Fox Searchlight Pictures is a unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment, a unit of Fox Entertainment Group.

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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