By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Columbia Pictures Acquires U.S. Rights to Bennett Miller’s FOXCATCHER from Annapurna

Posted Thursday, November 1st, 2012 - Comments Off on Columbia Pictures Acquires U.S. Rights to Bennett Miller’s FOXCATCHER from Annapurna
Be Sociable, Share!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Culver City, CA (November 1, 2012) – Columbia Pictures has picked up the United States distribution rights to Bennett Miller’s FOXCATCHER from Annapurna Pictures. In addition to the U.S. distribution rights, Columbia Pictures also joins the film as a co-financer. The deal reunites Miller with Columbia, having previously collaborated with the studio on last fall’s release of the Academy Award®-nominated picture, MONEYBALL. Panorama Media is commencing International sales of the film at the upcoming American Film Market.

Starring Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Redgrave and Anthony Michael Hall, FOXCATCHER was written by Dan Futterman and E. Max Frye. Producing the film are Megan Ellison, Anthony Bregman, and Miller.  The film is currently in production.

Columbia’s Andrew Gumpert and Michael Marshall negotiated the deal with Panorama Media.  Rights were acquired from Panorama Media, which is serving as the film’s sales agent.  SPE will aim to release the film in the fall of 2013.

ABOUT SONY PICTURES

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 159 countries. For additional information, go to http://www.sonypictures.com/

ABOUT ANNAPURNA PICTURESAnnapurna Pictures is a film production and finance company founded with the goal of creating sophisticated, high-quality films that might otherwise be considered risky by traditional Hollywood studios.

The company, which many consider to be a one-stop shop for filmmakers, has provided the industry with a critical boost of mature, adult dramas in recent years. Annapurna currently has two films in theatres:  Paul Thomas Anderson’s mind-blowing masterpiece THE MASTER, which premiered at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, with a North American premiere at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and John Hillcoat’s LAWLESS, the Prohibition-era gangster drama starring Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, and Jessica Chastain, which premiered to great acclaim at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

Upcoming releases include Andrew Dominik’s KILLING THEM SOFTLY, a modern crime drama starring Brad Pitt, which premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and  Kathryn Bigelow’s ZERO DARK THIRTY, a dramatization of the Navy SEALs hunt for Osama Bin Laden, set for a December 2012 release, as well as Wong Kar Wai’s THE GRANDMASTERS, the story of martial arts master and Bruce Lee’s trainer Ip Man.

Current projects include the new Untitled Spike Jonze Project starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams and Rooney Mara, which recently wrapped production, and Bennett Miller’s FOXCATCHER which is currently in toddproduction. Annapurna also recently acquired the rights to the highly successful TERMINATOR franchise as well as the 2012 Venice and Toronto break-out hit SPRING BREAKERS, directed by Harmony Korine starring Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and James Franco. Further, the company has partnered with Nina Jacobson’s Color Force on the best-selling comedic novel Where’d You Go, Bernadette, written by Maria Semple. This past spring, the company made a deal to back Panorama Media and will serve as the international sales agent on select Annapurna projects.

Be Sociable, Share!

Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | Comments Off on Columbia Pictures Acquires U.S. Rights to Bennett Miller’s FOXCATCHER from Annapurna

Comments are closed.

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