By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

ANNAPURNA TO PRODUCE AND DISTRIBUTE JACQUES AUDIARD’S “THE SISTERS BROTHERS”

Posted Friday, May 19th, 2017 - Comments Off on ANNAPURNA TO PRODUCE AND DISTRIBUTE JACQUES AUDIARD’S “THE SISTERS BROTHERS”
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Los Angeles, CA (May 19, 2017) – Annapurna will co-produce and co-finance award-winning filmmaker Jacques Audiard’s THE SISTERS BROTHERS, it was announced today. The company also holds the domestic distribution rights for the film. Why Not Productions will co-produce and co-finance the film alongside Annapurna with Page 114 also on board as producers. John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Riz Ahmed are set to star in the noir Western, written by Audiard and Thomas Bidegain, with production scheduled to begin this summer.

THE SISTERS BROTHERS, based on Patrick deWitt’s acclaimed novel of the same name, follows two brothers — Eli and Charlie Sisters — who are hired to kill a prospector who has stolen from their boss. The story, a genre-hybrid with comedic elements, takes place in Oregon in 1851. The film is Audiard’s follow-up to his Palme d’Or winning DHEEPAN, which premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and will be his project first shot completely in English.

 

Reilly originally optioned the novel and will produce alongside Michael De Luca, Rosa Attrab and Alison Dickey. Annapurna’s Megan Ellison will serve as an executive producer for the project. The international rights are being handled by IMR International.

 

CAA negotiated the deal on behalf of Why Not and Audiard. Chris Corabi negotiated the deal on behalf of Annapurna.

 

ABOUT ANNAPURNA

Annapurna, founded by Megan Ellison, focuses on creating sophisticated, high-quality content that is critically and commercially conscious while still appealing to a diverse audience. By upholding Ellison’s vision to put filmmakers and artists first and preserve their authentic creative voices no matter the genre or medium, in 5 years, the company has garnered a total of 32 Academy Award nominations for their projects, including ZERO DARK THIRTY, JOY, THE MASTER, FOXCATCHER, and THE GRANDMASTER. Ellison is also one of only four honorees ever to receive two Best Picture nominations in the same year, with HER and AMERICAN HUSTLE, both earning nods in 2014. Currently, Annapurna is in post-production on Kathryn Bigelow’s DETROIT, which it will release as its first distribution title on August 4, 2017. The company is also in production on Paul Thomas Anderson’s untitled new period film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and is developing the film adaptation of Maria Semple’s WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE, to be directed by Richard Linklater.  Annapurna’s most recent projects include Mike Mills’ 20TH CENTURY WOMEN, which was nominated for two Golden Globes and earned Mills a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination, as well as SAUSAGE PARTY, WIENER-DOG, and EVERYBODY WANTS SOME, with THE BAD BATCH set for release by Neon in 2017. Bigelow also directed and partnered with Annapurna on the animated short LAST DAYS, about illegal elephant poaching and the ivory trade.

 

 

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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