Richard Rionda Del Castro's Los Angeles-based Hannibal Pictures has acquired all rights to Masked And Anonymous in Italy, France, Spain, Greece and Turkey from Nigel Sinclair and Guy East's Spitfire Pictures.

Larry Charles' picture, which stars Bob Dylan as a singer on the comeback trail, premiered at Sundance and was picked up for US distribution by Sony Pictures Classics with IEG representing the rest of the world.

Masked And Anonymous is the first non-action title to join Hannibal's slate. The deal was closed by Del Castro. Hannibal's current AFM slate includes: the action-adventure Old Soldiers, which will be directed by Quentin Tarantino's cinematographer Andrzej Sekula and is expected to be ready for MIFED; Ballad To The End Of The World, a $40m project based on a French comic book about an American footballer who journeys through a magical kingdom in search of his wife; Yakuza, a crime thriller based on feuding gang killers; Top Ten, about a man who straps himself with explosives and threatens to kill an entire TV show audience; and Escobar, based on the life story of Pablo Escobar, the legendary Colombian drug lord who was killed in 1993.

All five pictures are in pre-production. Completed pictures on Hannibal's slate are: Crime Spree, a caper picture starring Gerard Depardieu and Harvey Keitel; Absolon, in which Christopher Lambert holds the key to a global plague; and Partners In Action, starring Armand Assante as an ex-police officer framed for murder.

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