By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

RADIUS-TWC PUTS ITS FAITH IN NICOLAS WINDING REFN’S ONLY GOD FORGIVES, STARRING RYAN GOSLING

Posted Thursday, March 1st, 2012 - 1 Comment »
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Label Acquires U.S. Rights To Crime Thriller That Reunites Refn With DRIVE Topliner Gosling

Kristin Scott Thomas, Tom Burke Co-Star In Wild Bunch/Gaumont Production, Currently Filming In Bangkok

New York, NY – March 1, 2012 – Radius-TWC, the new Weinstein Company label, announced today it has acquired U.S. distribution rights to ONLY GOD FORGIVES, a crime thriller written and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn.  ONLY GOD FORGIVES reunites the filmmaker with actor Ryan Gosling, who starred in Refn’s recent critical and popular hit, DRIVE.  Kristin Scott Thomas (SARAH’S KEY) and Tom Burke (CHERI) costar.  The producers are Wild Bunch, Gaumont, and Lene Børglum, an executive producer of Refn’s 2009 VALHALLA RISING.  The announcement was made by Radius-TWC Co-Presidents Tom Quinn and Jason Janego.

ONLY GOD FORGIVES is currently in production in Bangkok, Thailand.  This will be the fifth Refn film Quinn and Janego have distributed; during their tenure at Magnolia Pictures, they worked on the Danish director’s PUSHER trilogy, as well as BRONSON, a biopic about the UK’s most notorious prisoner.  Radius-TWC also recently acquired domestic rights to Luis Prieto’s English-language remake of PUSHER, which is executive produced by Refn.

Said Quinn and Janego, “In DRIVE, we witnessed the birth of a genuine and utterly exhilarating cinematic partnership: Refn and Gosling.  Their success stems from Refn’s unparalleled ability to create audacious anti-heroes and the ease with which Gosling inhabits these characters and imbues them with an untouchable, steely cool.  Combine that with an extraordinary villainess, the matriarch played by Kristin Scott Thomas, and ONLY GOD FORGIVES is sure to become a mesmerizing and provocative revenge classic.  We couldn’t be more proud and elated to have this film on the Radius slate.”

Remarked Refn, “I am looking forward to continuing to work with Tom Quinn which we’ve done on 5 previous films. The combination with Harvey Weinstein and his team makes the future look even more promising and exciting for me.”

The deal was negotiated for Radius-TWC by Quinn and Janego; and for the filmmakers by Carole Baraton of Wild Bunch and Cécile Gaget, Head of Gaumont International.

SYNOPSIS – ONLY GOD FORGIVES

Julian (Ryan Gosling) is a former kickboxer and gangster living in Bangkok. When his brother is murdered by a ruthless Thai police lieutenant, Julian is forced to seek vengeance or risk his own death.

ABOUT RADIUS-TWC

RADIUS-TWC, a newly launched label within The Weinstein Company, is the first studio division dedicated to multi-platform distribution.  Utilizing both traditional and digital media, RADIUS-TWC will bring the highest quality films and other specialty entertainment to a wider audience than ever before.  Led by Tom Quinn and Jason Janego, the label will continue to develop innovative distribution strategies to make marquee content available where, when and how consumers want.  The label recently announced their first acquisitions: BACHELORETTE, a raucous comedy about three best girlfriends whose night of prenuptial debauchery threatens to ruin the wedding; and PUSHER, an English-language remake of the Danish cult hit by Nicolas Winding Refn about a London drug pusher who grows increasingly desperate after a botched deal leaves him with a large debt to a ruthless drug lord.

ABOUT THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

The Weinstein Company (TWC) is a multimedia production and distribution company launched in October 2005 by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the brothers who founded Miramax Films in 1979. TWC also encompasses Dimension Films, the genre label founded in 1993 by Bob Weinstein, which has released such popular franchises as SCREAM, SPY KIDS and SCARY MOVIE. Together TWC and Dimension Films have released a broad range of mainstream, genre and specialty films that have been commercial and critical successes.  TWC releases took home eight 2012 Academy Awards, the most wins in the studio’s history. The tally included Best Picture for Michel Hazanavicius’s THE ARTIST and Best Documentary Feature for TJ Martin and Dan Lindsay’s UNDEFEATED. THE ARTIST brought TWC its second consecutive Best Picture statuette following the 2011 win for Tom Hooper’s THE KING’S SPEECH.

Since 2005, TWC and Dimension Films have released such films as GRINDHOUSE; I’M NOT THERE; THE GREAT DEBATERS; VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA; THE READER; THE ROAD; HALLOWEEN; THE PAT TILLMAN STORY; PIRANHA 3D; INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS; A SINGLE MAN; BLUE VALENTINE; THE COMPANY MEN; MIRAL; SCRE4M; SUBMARINE; DIRTY GIRL; APOLLO 18; OUR IDIOT BROTHER; I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT; SARAH’S KEY; and SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD IN 4D. Currently in release are MY WEEK WITH MARILYN; THE ARTIST; THE IRON LADY; CORIOLANUS; W.E.; and UNDEFEATED. Upcoming releases include BULLY and THE INTOUCHABLES. Recently wrapped was SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, and currently in production is DJANGO UNCHAINED.

TWC is also active in television production, led by former Miramax Films President of Production and current President of Television Meryl Poster, with credits including the Emmy® nominated and Peabody Award winning reality series Project Runway, spin-off series Project Accessory and Project Runway All Stars, the VH1 reality series Mob Wives, and the critically acclaimed HBO comedy/crime series The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency which also received a Peabody Award. The company is currently in pre-production on the martial-arts epic Marco Polo for Starz as well as production on the second season of Mob Wives and the newest installment in the series’ franchise Mob Wives Chicago. TWC additionally has 17 series in different stages of development, including The Nanny Diaries, being adapted for ABC by Amy Sherman Palladino (Gilmore Girls).

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Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | 1 Comment »

One Response to “RADIUS-TWC PUTS ITS FAITH IN NICOLAS WINDING REFN’S ONLY GOD FORGIVES, STARRING RYAN GOSLING”

  1. alexa says:
    March 6, 2012 at 5:38 am

    You might hear one comparing this to a Tarantino film, but take a second and leave all worries at the door, this is an absorbing and tremendously unique piece of cinema from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. The reason it works so exquisitely well is because the film grabs hold of you and takes you inside this often dark and dream-like LA setting. So, when the end of the film hits, you feel apart of this film, and it’s there to stay.

    This film also offers a Ryan Gosling like you’ve never seen him, speaking only when necessary, with tension and fury in his eyes. He’s silent, caring, and ridiculously tough. Every line is delivered perfectly and every gesture is natural.

    I saw this at the LA Film Festival on a mammoth screen with booming speakers. The music only makes this film more unique. It is catchy and synchronized perfectly with the TRULY beautiful cinematography.

    This film is the BEST of its genre, but really. I honestly cannot compare it to any other film, for it is truly that different. “Drive” is already the best of the year, because I’m POSITIVE no other film will haunt and invade me quite like this film has. This is not just a classic for its genre, but a beautiful and bold classic in general.

    Have a lovely day
    Alexa

Quote Unquotesee all »

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