THE OBENSON REPORT

Covering Cinema From All Across The African Diaspora

SUNDANCE 2009 - Brooklyn's Finest Picked Up



Well... no surprise here. Did anyone really doubt that it wouldn't be acquired for distribution, given how high profile a film it is, with all the "name" talent involved?


It's always been of a matter of WHEN the film will reach theatres, not if.

From THR:

PARK CITY - The Sundance Film Festival has its first major deal. Senator Distribution snapped up North American rights to Antoine Fuqua's cop drama "Brooklyn's Finest" on Saturday evening.

The Marco Weber/Mark Urman banner (Weber is CEO, and Urman is president) is believed to have paid in the low- to mid-seven figures for rights to the pic, which played strongly at its Eccles debut Friday night.

Sony Pictures, which has a deal with Senator, will partner with the outfit, with Senator handling theatrical and Sony handling all ancillary rights.

CAA and WMA are co-repping rights to the morality tale, which stars Richard Gere, Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke as cops at very different stages of their career, each faced with moral dilemmas.

While billed as a thriller, it also operates as a character study of its trio of complex protagonists.

A number of distributors were circling the picture, though some were concerned about the length and potential for backend deals for the many star actors.

Fuqua will edit the film as part of the deal, insiders said.

The only somewhat surprising piece of the above is that Fuqua will be re-editing the film as part of the deal. Certainly nothing we haven't heard before - filmmakers asked to re-cut their films as part of a distribution agreement. I wonder how long it is, and how long they would like it to be. IMDB doesn't tell much.

SlashFilm screened the film yesterday at Sundance, and have a snapshot review of it up on their site. Here's a snippet:

Hawke and Cheadle’s storylines are probably worthy of a film in their own right, but I found Gere’s arc completely uninteresting. And that was one of the problems I had with this film — the stories are almost completely unrelated in every single way. Most of the times with these type of films, the character are more connected, either by story or theme. But in Brooklyn’s Finest, the characters intersect for seconds and the climax takes place in the same location, but for the most part, the film is comprised of three completely unconnected storylines with themes that are only broadly connected.
You can read the rest of it HERE.

via THR

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