John Hillcoat, Wong Kar-Wai, Kathryn Bigelow, Paul Thomas Anderson, David O. Russell, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman. To say that Megan Ellison and her Annapurna Pictures have impeccable taste in filmmakers would be an understatement, and the shingle is now adding another acclaimed name under the banner.
Literally minutes after it has finished screening for press at the Venice Film Festival (our review is coming shortly), Annapurna Pictures has snapped up the U.S. rights to Harmony Korine's zany "Spring Breakers." Starring James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Heather Morris and Gucci Mane (!?) with Cliff Martinez and Skrillex scoring the film, and Randall Poster serving as music supervisor, this is certainly Korine's most "professional" effort to date. But the premise is distinctly his own. Here's the official synopsis:
SPRING BREAKERS tells the story of four sexy college girls as they plan to fund their spring break getaway by burglarizing a fast food shack. But that's only the beginning… At a motel room rager, fun reaches its legal limit and the girls are arrested and taken to jail. Hungover and clad only in bikinis, the girls appear before a judge but are bailed out unexpectedly by Alien (James Franco), an infamous local thug who takes them under his wing and leads them on the wildest Spring Break trip in history. Rough on the outside but with a soft spot inside, Alien wins over the hearts of the young Spring Breakers, and leads them on a Spring Break they never could have imagined.
Annapurna isn't a traditional distributor and will need to partner up with someone to get the movie into theaters. And so far, they have found a common ally in The Weinstein Company, who helped release "Lawless" last week, will get "Killing Them Softly" into theaters in October, and are on tap for "The Grandmasters" whenever that gets finished.
No release date yet, but sorry buyers, you can take this one off your list for TIFF.
I hope that Annapurna rescues Charlie Kaufman's musical with Nic Cage, Jack Black and Steve Carrell.
The Proposition was fine as far as Sam Pekinpah rip-offs are concerned. And I guess it made Hillcoat look prescient when better filmmakers like Andrew Dominik, Coen Brothers and PT Anderson made revisionist westerns two years later. But that doesn't mean he stacks up to them, The Proposition is better than 3:10 to Yuma but Hillcoat is more in the league with James Mangold than PT Anderson for sure
John Hillcoat, Wong Kar-Wai, Kathryn Bigelow, Paul Thomas Anderson, David O. Russell, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Harmony Korine… Which of these things is not like the others? All of them have made at least one really awesome movie, in many cases more than one, except John Hillcoat. I still don't understand why this guy gets lumped in with the rest of these 'Actual Best Filmmakers Working Today'