Spaceship Earth

Source: Sundance Film Festival

Spaceship Earth

US distributor Neon and French sales company Charades have signed an innovative sales deal for three titles on the former’s upcoming US distribution slate, Spaceship Earth, The Painter And The Thief, and She Dies Tomorrow.

Neon announced earlier this week that it would launch Matt Wolf’s timely quarantine experiment documentary Spaceship Earth on May 8 with a multi-pronged strategy, involving drive-in venues, pop-up cityscape projections and revenue-sharing virtual cinemas as well as initiatives run by locked-down museums, bookstores and restaurants.

The film premiered in Sundance’s US documentary competition this year. 

Under the sales deal, Charades and Neon will provide distributors with a marketing package setting out a replicable model that can be adapted to their own markets. 

Non Stop Entertainment (Scandinavia) and Madman (Australia) have already signed up for the package and other territories are also in discussion.

“We look forward to working hand in hand with our talented friends at Neon and local distributors to replicate this very timely cinematic model,” said Charades co-chief Carole Baraton.

Neon CEO Tom Quinn also welcomed the opportunity to work with “Charades, Non-Stop and Madman to create and develop release strategies and initiatives that will carry us through a global shutdown and into 2021”.

Norwegian filmmaker Benjamin Ree’s The Painter And The Thief premiered in Sundance’s world cinema documentary competition this year, while Amy Siemetz’s existential thriller She Dies Tomorrow was to have premiered in the narrative feature competition of SXSW 2020. Neon has yet to date the US releases for these films.