Sony Pictures Classics Acquires Distribution Rights For Mike Leigh’s Another Year

With buzz surrounding Mike Leigh’s latest film sparking not only massive hoopla in tweets sent out by those in Cannes, but it also kicked off a bidding war. Both The Weinstein Company and Sony Pictures Classics were in the running, but apparently, a winner has been announced.

The first major sale at this year’s Cannes Film Festival makes Another Year the latest addition to Sony Pictures Classics’ camp, who acquired the domestic distribution rights to the film on Tuesday. The film, produced in the U.K., is currently one of the favorites to win the festival’s top prize, and follows a married couple, a group of troubled fans, and the overarching theme that is aging. It’s a generational drama, and is not only something right up SPC’s alley, but it’s just the film that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences comes to love around Oscar time.

Leigh’s last film, Happy-Go-Lucky, kicked off in October of 2008, garnering an impressive amount of buzz and awards talk, so expect a similar situation for this hotly talked about critical darling. It remains to be seen if other big names like Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Biutiful will get a big payday, but at this point, we have our first major bit of news from Cannes.

Source: THR