Fox Searchlight Wins Bid To Distribute Nate Parker’s The Birth Of A NationPosted by Wilson Morales
January 26, 2016
Source: Variety
After making its World Premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and generating great buzz, many studios were lining up to purchase the rights to distribute writer-director Nate Parker’s feature debut, “The Birth of a Nation.”
According to Variety, Fox Searchlight is closing a $17.5 million deal to acquire worldwide rights to the Nat Turner biopic. Should that figure hold up, it would be the biggest deal ever at the festival. In 2015, the studio picked up worldwide rights to the Sundance award winning film “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” for $12M and the Oscar nominated film “Brooklyn” for $9M. To date “Brooklyn” has grossed $27M at the box office.
Hopefully, the deal includes marketing money or that could be added later once full details are announced. Fox Searchlight scored big when it distributed another slave film, “12 Years a Slave,” which eventually grossed $188M worldwide and went on to Best Picture in 2014. Keep in mind that film had numerous well-known names in the cast such as Chiwetel Ejiofor, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sarah Paulson, Alfre Woodard and Paul Giamatti. Since 2009, no Sundance film has grossed more $45M domestically since Lee Daniels’ Precious came on the scene and was also nominated for Best Picture.
The cast also includes Armie Hammer, Aunjanue Ellis, Gabrielle Union, Jackie Earle Haley, Colman Domingo, Dwight Henry, Roger Guenveur Smith and Aja Naomi King.
The film is a biopic of African-American slave turned revolutionary Nat Turner, who led a bloody rebellion in 1831 and went down in history as one of the most controversial American figures preceding the Civil War.
Ellis plays Nancy Turner (Nat’s mother). Domingo will play Hark, Nat’s best friend turned first lieutenant in the rebellion, while Union plays his wife, Ester. Hammer will play Samuel Turner, the son of Nat’s first master Benjamin Turner.
Turner, born in 1800, led the famously violent Virginia insurrection that moved from plantation to plantation freeing slaves and left 60 white men, women, and children dead. He was later captured, arrested, and hanged but his legacy grew to mythic proportions.
Production companies include Bron Studios, Phantom Four, Mandalay Pictures and Tiny Giant Prods. in association with Follow Through Prods., Infinity Entertainment and Creative Wealth Media Finance. Producers are Bron’s Aaron L. Gilbert, Parker, Kevin Turen, Jason Michael Berman and Preston Holmes.
Executive producers are David Goyer, Mike Novogratz, Michael Finley, Tony Parker, Jason Cloth, Jane Oster, Barb Lee, Carl Lindner, Derrick Brooks, Ryan and Jill Ahrens, Armin Tehrany and Mark Moran.
