By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

SPC Takes Zvyagintsev’s “Loveless”

Posted Wednesday, May 17th, 2017 - Comments Off on SPC Takes Zvyagintsev’s “Loveless”
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Sony Pictures Classics announced today that they have acquired all rights in North America and Latin America to Andrey Zvyagintsev’s LOVELESS.  The Russian language film will premiere In Competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, May 18.

Sony Pictures Classics and Zvyagintsev previously worked together on LEVIATHAN, winner of Best Screenplay at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Golden Globes and was Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.  LOVELESSS also marks the third partnership between Zvyagintsev and producer Alexander Rodnyansky.

In LOVELESS, Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.

Co-written by Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin, the film is produced by Non-Stop Production (Russia), Fetisoff Illusion (Russia), Why Not Production (France), Les Films du Fleuve (Belgium) Senator Film Production (Germany) with support from Eurimages, Arte, Canal+, WDR and Cine+.

“I am very pleased to be working with the excellent team at Sony Pictures Classics again; they were sensitive and inspired in their tremendous efforts on LEVIATHAN, and I look forward to our new collaboration,” stated Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Said Alexander Rodnyansky “Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and the outstanding team at SPC, are the gold standard of American distribution for our films. We are thrilled to be working with them once again.”

“There is no more timely film than LOVELESS. Andrey is one of the world’s finest directors in peak form here. It is just great to be in business again with him and Alexander following our success together with LEVIATHAN a few years ago,” said Sony Pictures Classics.

The deal was negotiated between Wild Bunch and SPC.

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 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.”
~ 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