A couple more sales from the Cannes Film Festival being reported today include Sony Pictures Classics paying $6 million for James Vanderbilt’s Truth, about the controversial “Rathergate” scandal that ended the careers of newsman Dan Rather (as played by Robert Redford) at CBS and his “60 Minutes” producer Mary Mapes (as played by Cate Blanchett).
Co-starring Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace and Elisabeth Moss, the film follows the controversy that ensued after a “60 Minutes” expose by Rather and Mapes that George W. Bush ducked serving in Vietnam after graduating Yale in 1968 by getting a National Guard post through the clout of his father and future president George H.W. Bush. This revelation came shortly after the news show broke a story about prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib during Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004, but their reliance on unvalidated documents led to criticism from conservatives and an internal investigation by CBS that led to Mapes’ dismissal.
Based on Mapes’ 2005 book “Truth and Duty: The Press, The President And The Privilege Of Power,” Truth is the directorial debut by Vanderbilt, the writer of The Amazing Spider-Man, Zodiac and White House Down, and it’s co-produced by Vanderbilt with Brad Fischer, William Sherak and Mikkel Bondesen. Financing comes from RatPac Entertainment and Echo Lake Entertainment.
The film didn’t premiere at Cannes but Vanderbilt is finishing up post on the movie which may be ready to premiere later this year.
Meanwhile, My Golden Years, the latest film from French auteur Arnaud Desplechin, which debuted as part of Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, has had its U.S. distribution picked up by Magnolia Pictures. It stars Desplechin regular Mathieu Amalric as Paul Dedalus, an anthropologist leaving Tajikistan who has flashbacks to his childhood dealing with his mother’s madness and father’s depression, and to his love affair with the beautiful Esther.
