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Howard Previews Rush
The director screens
near finished film to
foreign distribs while
Charlize Theron
pushes Dark Places
By Pamela McClintock
DirecTor ron howard
was in Berlin on Sunday
to screen a near-finished
cut of his Formula 1 movie
Rush for foreign distributors
who bought into the
project a year ago during
the European Film
Market. “We have a special
relationship with Berlin
and are very happy to
share this special film with
you,” Howard said during
the presentation, which was
organized by Exclusive Media
and Cross Creek Pictures.
Chris Hemsworth and Daniel
Bruhl star in Rush, which
chronicles the historic 1970s
rivalry between charismatic
Englishman James Hunt
(Hemsworth) and the disciplined
Austrian Niki Lauda
(Bruhl). Universal is distributing
Rush in the U.S., where it
hits theaters on Sept. 20.
“This movie will be a big
hit. Interestingly, women
really enjoyed it too,” said one
Operation Kino buys Iron Picker
for Turkey, Other Markets
Danis Tanovic’s Berlin Competition entry will be distributed by
the joint venture formed by four European film festivals By Clarence Tsui
OperaTion Kino has picKed up
rights to Golden Bear candidate An
Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker
for Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria and the
countries of the former Yugoslavia.
Operation Kino, a joint distribution initiative
launched by the Istanbul, Transylvania,
Sofia and Sarajevo film festivals.
Danis Tanovic’s film, which revolves
around an impoverished Roma woman’s
struggle to get treatment following her
stillbirth, will be released under the Media
Mundus-supported label, with the individual
festivals showing the title in their
program and then touring it around the
countries’ peripheral regions.
“’[The] festivals-as-distributors
business model proved attractive to the
From left: Dark Places director Gilles Paquet-
Brenner, Charlize Theron and Alex Walton,
president of sales distribution, Exclusive Media
prominent producer who was
invited to the screening.
Exclusive had another treat in
store for foreign buyers over the
weekend: Charlize Theron came
to Berlin to plug presales for Dark
Places, the big-screen adaptation
of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling
novel of the same name.
The actress signed a deal to
star in and produce the movie
on the eve of Berlin, just as
Exclusive Media announced it
would finance and produce the
2
From left: Alex Walton, president
of Exclusive International; Rush
screenwriter Peter Morgan; director
Ron Howard; and Guy East,
co-chairman of Exclusive Media
film with Theron’s production
company Denver and Delilah
Productions, Hugo Productions
and Mandalay Vision.
Gilles Paquet-Brenner
(Sarah’s Key) is directing Dark
Places, about a grown woman
who must re-investigate
whether her brother was really
responsible for the death of
their mother and sisters years
earlier. Alex Walton, president
of Exclusive International, is
selling the project at EFM.
Rival buyers say they love
the script, but question
whether foreign buyers will
embrace the story’s darker
themes. Theron’s involvement,
however, is a big plus. thr
rights-holders, especially in the developing
markets such as ours, since it guarantees a
blend of festival publicity and classic P&A
spending for their films, giving them sufficient
visibility to achieve attractiveness
in the ever-saturating market for films,”
said Jovan Marjanovic, the Sarajevo Film
Festival’s head of industry. “The fact that
the films acquired for Operation Kino get
wider releases with more publicity and
marketing adds to the competitiveness of
the model in relation to traditional distributors
in these territories.”
Additional acquisitions will follow, said
Istanbul festival director Azize Tan and
Transylvania festival head Tudor Giurgiu.
Iron Picker will also be made available on
VOD platforms. thr
Wrecking Hill Gets
Gallowwalkers
By Scott Roxborough
Heat Index
jennifer aniston
Aniston was already attached
to two projects being shopped
in Berlin. This weekend, she
also joined Peter Bogdanovich
comedy She’s Funny That Way.
gerard depardieu
With Isabelle Huppert and
Catherine Deneuve in Berlin as
ambassadors of French film,
Gerard Depardieu is just here to
support a vodka label’s party.
paul VerhoeVen
The Dutch filmmaker (Basic
Instinct, Total Recall) kicked
off the Berlin Talent Campus
program. Despite his work on
the much-maligned Showgirls,
he was feted as a master.
WrecKin’ hill enTerTainmenT
has picked up North American
rights to Gallowwalkers,
a sci-fi horror actioner starring Wesley
Snipes, from VMI Worldwide.
VMI also sealed deals for the feature
with Presidio for Japan and with Phoenicia
for the Mideast.
“Wesley is officially back in the U.S.,
and soon the rest of the world — we are
meeting our EFM goal to reintroduce
him to the audiences with Gallowwalkers,”
said VMI president Andre Relis.
Written and directed by Andrew and
Joanne Ray, Gallowwalkers features
Snipes as a cursed gunman besieged by
an army of the undead: the risen corpses
of the men he has killed. Producers
include Jack Bowyer, Courtney Lauren
Penn and Brandon Burrows. thr
day5_newsA.indd 2 2/10/13 9:03 PM