One year on from its Berlinale Special screening Australian horror Talk To Me has grossed nearly $100m at the global box office and sellers have heeded the call: EFM 2024 is packed with “elevated genre” titles.
Neon snapped up Steven Soderbergh’s Lucy Liu ghost story Presence in Sundance and the international division has kicked off talks in Berlin. Neon International also has Cuckoo, Tilman Singer’s horror that premieres in the Berlinale Special section and stars Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens.
A24 is selling I Saw The TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun’s take on gender dysphoria and teenage isolation which also debuted in Park City and receives its international premiere in Panorama, while Magnus Martens’ Norwegian comedy horror There’s Something In The Barn from genre aces XYZ Films is on Charades’ slate.
Meanwhile Highland Film Group is hoping buyers respond to possession story Rosario from Mucho Mas Media and Silk Mass, the producers behind last year’s shark horror The Black Demon with Josh Lucas.
”You have to be offering something different”
Stephen Kelliher, managing director of Bankside Films, which sold Talk To Me, said the focus is on originality and scope. “You have to be offering something different and have some type of ambition around the film.”
Kelliher read the screenplay to Talk To Me in 2021 through his longstanding relationship with Australian producers Causeway Films, (The Babadook) with whom Bankside has partnered on genre titles like Martin Freeman zombie film Cargo, which sold to Netflix, and Goran Stolevski’s period fantasy horror and Focus Features acquisition You Won’t Be Alone.
Talk To Me came with Australian soft money and Bankside and sister company Head Gear Films put up funds to close the financing, cut a promo, and sold out international at Cannes 2022. “Everybody just went crazy for it,” recalls Kelliher. “What’s more impressive is that it was all single- territory sales and not a worldwide pick-up.”
After A24 acquired North American rights at Sundance 2023 in a high seven-figure deal the film opened over the July 28-30 weekend when the second session of the ‘Barbenheimer’ box office phenomenon was in full effect. The R-rated horror proved to be the perfect counter-programmer, opening in sixth place on $10.4m from 2,340 theatres and finishing on $48.3m – no mean feat for a film by first-time theatrical directors working without a name cast.
The international roll-out continued through the summer, with notable highlights coming from Mexico and Brazil through Diamond ($6.8m and $3.1m, respectively), France via SND ($4.1m), the UK through Altitude ($3.2m), and the filmmakers’ native Australia through Maslow on $2.9m. Japan, the final territory, has generated more than $1m through Gaga. Overall Talk To Me has grossed close to $95m worldwide.
Bankside’s slate includes three more of what Kelliher calls “authored genre” titles. Two come from Causeway Films: Jon Bell’s recent Sundance selection The Moogai, which threads supernatural elements with a story of Aboriginal generational trauma; and ghost story Went Up The Hill starring Vicky Krieps and Dacre Montgomery, which is in post.
Also in post is Rabbit Trap produced by Elijah Wood’s SpectreVision starring Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen.’
’The Damned’, ’Spirit In The Blood’
Protagonist Pictures is starting sales on Thordur Palsson’s 19th century-set psychological horror The Damned, starring Odessa Young and Joe Cole, and C May Borgstrom’s Spirit In The Blood, about teenage girls battling dark forces in a religious mountain community.
Janina Vilsmaier, Protagonist’s SVP of sales and distribution, says the company is “very selective” not just about the directors but the producers with whom it works.
The UK outfit brought financing and production partner Ley Line Entertainment onto The Damned after Elation Pictures partnered with Wild Atlantic to structure the co-production with Iceland’s Join Motion Pictures and Belgium’s Wrong Men.
Screen Ireland, Wallimage and the UK Global Screen Fund supported the feature. Protagonist introduced a teaser in Cannes last year and represents US sales with CAA Media Finance.
Germany’s Junafilm approached Protagonist with Spirit In The Blood. Protagonist secured remaining financing by partnering with France’s Logical Pictures and brought on Elevation Pictures as Canadian co-producer. Summer H. Howell and Sarah-Maxine Racicot star in the completed feature.
As Bankside’s Kelliher puts it, “It’s about having a unique story, one that’s unexpected. And then executing it.”
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