Sales are starting to flow at this year’s Cannes Film Festival with the news that Open Road Films has won a bidding war to distribute the Miles Teller boxing drama Bleed for This, telling the story of boxer Vinny Paz, picking it up for a reported $4 million.
The boxer, born Vincenzo Pazienza and known as the “Pazmanian Devil,” became world champion in multiple weight classes, but after winning the Jr. Middleweight World title, he was in a serious accident that left him with a broken neck, leaving him paralyzed. He was told he would never walk again, let alone fight, but he kept working out and a little over a year after the car crash returned to the ring and won a match against Luis Santana.
The boxing comeback story is directed by Ben Younger (Boiler Room) and co-stars Katey Sagal, Amanda Clayton and Aaron Eckhart as Vinny’s trainer Kevin Rooney. The film was produced by Younger with Bruce Cohen, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Chad Verdi and Noah Kraft with Martin Scorsese, Myles Nestel and Lisa Wilson as executive producers.
One of the more controversial films going into Cannes was Gaspar Noé’s “arousing sexual melodrama” Love, a 3D French film that was advertised with a number of sexually graphic posters, which has quickly been picked up by distributor Alchemy. Starring Karl Glusman, Aomi Muyock, and Klara Kristin, it involves a man named Murphy, who wakes up to a voicemail from the mother of his former lover Electra telling him that she has gone missing causing him to reflect on their tumultuous love affair.
Lastly, at least for now, Sony Pictures Classics has picked up the North American distribution rights to the Hungarian Holocaust drama Son of Saul (aka “Saul Fia”), the debut feature from director Laszlo Nemes about a prisoner at Auschwitz, which received strong reviews from its Cannes premiere.
This is Sony Pictures Classics’ second buy for Cannes following the Asian drama Our Little Sister.
