Intermedia and Good Machine International (GMI) have closed a raft of sales on Adaptation, the new movie from director Spike Jonze which stars Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper.

Columbia Pictures will release the film in North America; sister company Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group has taken it for Australia and New Zealand and Latin America; Asmik Ace took it for Japan, Lauren Film for Spain, SamFilm for Iceland, Shani Film for Israel, Italia Film for the Middle East, LNK for Portugal, Nu Metro for South Africa and Spring Cinemas for Taiwan.

Scandinavia and France are currently in negotiations, according to Jere Hausfater, president of worldwide distribution and acquisitions at Intermedia, and David Linde, president of GMI, who are co-representing Adaptation.

Charlie Kaufman, who wrote Jonze's Being John Malkovich as well as Human Nature and Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, wrote the screenplay in which Cage plays an LA screenwriter (self-referentially called Charlie Kaufman) who is struggling to adapt The Orchid Thief, a novel by Susan Orlean (Streep).

Adaptation is produced by Edward Saxon, Jonathan Demme and Vincent Landay. The film starts shooting in mid-March and is scheduled for domestic release by Columbia later in the year.

The film was first offered to buyers at London Screenings and although it is moderately budgeted, buyers were asked to guarantee back-end gross participation for the talent involved - a relatively new trend in the independent marketplace. At this week's AFM, for example, Icon Entertainment International is believed to requiring that 25% of gross revenues be returned to the talent on its Mel Gibson-starrer We Were Soldiers Once -And Young.