The first big sale out of the Toronto Film Festival is an odd duck in what many have complained to be a slow pace of business despite the addition of an official market.
IFC came in to the festival with Joshua Guiliano’s River in the Midnight Madness section. The response was so rabid that other distributors wanted it including Jason Blum (who has his Blumhouse Atomic Monster deal at Universal) and Sony.
Sony looked to be the last studio standing Monday morning with a bid of $8 million. Focus, Paramount, A24 and Netflix had all passed by Saturday night. This morning, Sony was out, then Blum, along with Universal, ultimately won, taking the feature — about three embittered siblings stranded on a country boat who are stalked by a faceless killer — for over $10 million. Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe star.
It’s very unusual for a distributor to give up any kind of feature commodity in a booming box office marketplace, but the acquisition money was so good here; IFC couldn’t resist.
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Blumhouse Atomic Monster was passionate to get its hands on the project all weekend, and it all makes sense: Sam Zimmerman, who leads indies at that genre studio, worked with Giuiano on River during his time at Shudder. Also, last week Blumhouse Atomic Monster, Divide/Conquer and Spooky Pictures inked Giuliano’s next movie Occupant.
Last year, Focus Features, acquired Obsession out of TIFF for $15M. Following that sale, Blumhouse Atomic Monster boarded as a producer. That turned into a massive global-grossing hit with more than $513 million at the box office, and that Curry Barker-directed title is pushing for awards. Barker’s next movie is with Focus Features and Blumhouse: the ghost hunters as hucksters title, Anything But Ghosts
Twelve reviews on Rotten Tomatoes stand at 83% fresh for River.