Fox Searchlight Gets in the Ring with 'The Wrestler'
Fox Searchlight Gets in the Ring with The Wrestler
in Casting News
Darren Aronofsky has scored a pinfall with Fox Searchlight. According to Variety, the Fox indie arm has picked up Aronofsky's new film, The Wrestler, which is the first major sale of the Toronto Film Festival, followed by Danny Boyle's gritty but moving Slumdog Millionaire.
The studio won the bidding war for the film, which stars Mickey Rourke, picking up the film for $4 milliion, beating out other studios such as Lionsgate, Overture, Weinstein Co. and Sony.
A release date hasn't been set, but an Oscar campaign is being set up for the film and it is likely that the film will bow in late December in a platform release, with plans to go wider in January of 2009.
The distributor also picked up the fest's other breakout film, Danny Boyle's gritty but moving Slumdog Millionaire, a coming-of-age tale set in India that involves a competition on the country's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Searchlight acquired an interest in Slumdog Millionaire from Warner Bros. just two weeks ago. And Sunday night in Toronto, at the exact same time as The Wrestler unspooled, so did "Slumdog," which screened to enthusiastic applause, signaling its potential to become a fall crossover hit, just as Searchlight's Juno did last year after Toronto.