By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS ACQUIRES STANLEY TUCCI’S FINAL PORTRAIT

Posted Wednesday, May 17th, 2017 - Comments Off on SONY PICTURES CLASSICS ACQUIRES STANLEY TUCCI’S FINAL PORTRAIT
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NEW YORK (May 17, 2017) – Sony Pictures Classics announced today that they have acquired all rights in North America to Stanley Tucci’s FINAL PORTRAIT from Riverstone Pictures. The film had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival out of competition in a gala screening.
Written and directed by Tucci, FINAL PORTRAIT stars Geoffrey Rush, Armie Hammer, Clémence Poésy, Tony Shalhoub and Sylvie Testud and is produced by Gail Egan, Nik Bower and Ilann Girard and executive produced by Deepak Nayar, Fred Hogge and Ted Blumberg.
FINAL PORTRAIT is the story of the touching and offbeat friendship between American writer and art-lover James Lord and Alberto Giacometti, as seen through Lord’s eyes and revealing unique insight into the beauty, frustration, profundity and sometimes the chaos of the artistic process. Set in 1964, while on a short trip to Paris, Lord is asked by his friend, Giacometti, to sit for a portrait. The process, promises Giacometti, will take only a few days and so Lord agrees — ultimately wondering “how much longer can it go on like this?”
“Giacometti’s work and life and Lord’s poignant memoir have fascinated me for years. To finally bring my adaptation to the screen with this extraordinary cast and crew has been indeed a pleasure and to have Sony Classics distributing is a great honor,” said Tucci.
“Audiences everywhere will embrace what Stanley Tucci has done here. He has made a remarkable film about the artistic process of the great painter and sculptor Giacometti, with a stunning cast led by Geoffrey Rush.  We are thrilled to be involved,” added Sony Pictures Classics.
The deal was negotiated between CAA and SPC. HanWay Films is handling international sales and distribution and is selling remaining territories in Cannes where the company has four films included in Official Selection.

ABOUT SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Michael Barker and Tom Bernard serve as co-presidents of Sony Pictures Classics—an autonomous division of Sony Pictures Entertainment they founded with Marcie Bloom in January 1992, which distributes, produces, and acquires independent films from around the world.  Barker and Bernard have released prestigious films that have won 37 Academy Awards® (33 of those at Sony Pictures Classics) and have garnered 163 Academy Award® nominations (137 at Sony Pictures Classics) including Best Picture nominations for WHIPLASH, AMOUR, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, AN EDUCATION, CAPOTE, HOWARDS END, AND CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.

ABOUT RIVERSTONE PICTURES

Riverstone Pictures is a Reliance Entertainment company and is backed by Ingenious. The company was founded in 2014 by veteran Hollywood producer Deepak Nayar and Nik Bower, former MD of Media at Ingenious.  Based in London and Los Angeles, Riverstone produces and finances theatrical feature films and international television.  Its projects to date include Michael Grandage’s first film Genius, starring Colin Firth, Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Laura Linney; Taylor Sheridan’s directorial debut Wind River, starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen and Peter Landesman’s Watergate drama Felt, starring Liam Neeson and Diane Lane.  Riverstone has also recently financed the independent action movies Sleepless starring Jamie Foxx and Replicas starring Keanu Reeves.  Riverstone has a growing development slate led by Jeremy Baxter, former head of acquisitions and development at Protagonist.

ABOUT POTBOILER PRODUCTIONS

Potboiler Productions is a leading European independent film company headed and run by Andrea Calderwood and Gail Egan. Led by a passion for producing unique and original international scale film and television projects, as well as encouraging and nurturing new talent, the producers’ track record encompasses a successful and long term relationship with novelist John le Carré, beginning with the Oscar-winning thriller The Constant Gardener directed by Fernando Meirelles, and going onto the thriller A Most Wanted Man, directed by Anton Corbijn, and starring the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Rachel McAdams; as well as Ewan McGregor and Naomi Harris in Susanna White’s Our Kind of Traitor. Their productions also include Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland for which Forest Whitaker won the Oscar, Doug McGrath’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel Nicholas Nickleby, the award-winning writer Tony Grisoni’s Brothers of the Head, directed by Lou Pepe and Keith Fulton; Paddy Breathnach’s Man About Dog; Gabriel Range’s hard-hitting I am Slave; Biyi Bandele’s Half of a Yellow Sun with Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor and John Boyega, and David Simon’s Emmy-winning mini-series Generation Kill for HBO. Potboiler continues to work with great talent from across the globe and more recently has produced Alan Rickman’s A Little Chaos starring Kate Winslet and Matthias Schoenaerts; British drama Trespass Against Us with Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson; and most recently Final Portrait, written and directed by Stanley Tucci and starring Geoffrey Rush and Armie Hammer.

ABOUT INGENIOUS

Ingenious is the leading independent investor in the UK’s creative industries, founded by Patrick McKenna in 1998. Ingenious Investments is the manager of a wide range of businesses spanning the media & entertainment, clean energy and real estate sectors. For further information, please visit www.theingeniousgroup.co.uk<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.theingeniousgroup.co.uk&d=DwMGaQ&c=fP4tf–1dS0biCFlB0saz0I0kjO5v7-GLPtvShAo4cc&r=QTD1Xfysb9_sdP_DD4XsdqgiOUxIIG-cpp3sXhL_GX4&m=2KhCUwqBUlgieyjzBdlfpNgGP87oEN43V68wK2jHOL8&s=0mJ09miyv10vBui57vP3uR9Nml36QfEybY2R4wPKV-A&e=>

ABOUT RELIANCE ENTERTAINMENT

Reliance Entertainment is part of India’s Reliance Group, and has a significant presence in filmed entertainment, radio and TV broadcasting, new media ventures and state-of-the-art integrated film and media services. Internationally, Reliance Entertainment partnered with legendary producer-director Steven Spielberg in the formation of DreamWorks Studios.  The Reliance Group is led by Chairman Anil D. Ambani, and is amongst India’s largest business houses, with interests in telecommunications, energy, defense, financial services, infrastructure and media and entertainment.

ABOUT HANWAY FILMS

HanWay Films is a UK based international sales company specializing in quality, high-profile and commercially driven films from visionary and unique filmmakers around the world. Established in 1998 by producer Jeremy Thomas, HanWay offers full service solutions; arranging financing, sales, marketing and distribution. HanWay has long-term global producing partnerships and represents films from Recorded Picture Company along with projects from third party producers as well as the rights to an extensive film catalogue of over five hundred feature films.

HanWay’s slate includes four titles in Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival; Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell which will receive its World Premiere In Competition, Takashi Miike’s Blade of the Immortal, John Cameron Mitchell’s How to Talk to Girls at Parties, and Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s A Prayer before Dawn all which will screen Out of Competition. HanWay also represents Stanley Tucci’s Final Portrait which received its World Premiere at the 2017 Berlinale; Haifaa Al Mansour’s Mary Shelley starring Elle Fanning, and, coming up; Ralph Fiennes’ Nureyev thriller The White Crow, Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio starring Toni Servillo, Sweetness in the Belly from director Zeresenay Mehari starring Saoirse Ronan; Oliver Parker’s Swimming With Men, and Wash Westmoreland’s Colette, starring Keira Knightley and Dominic West.

ABOUT SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT

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 142 countries.

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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.”
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~ David Simon