The Weinstein Company (TWC), is busy scooping up deals on the French Riviera. According to Deadline Hollywood, they have won the bidding for the Keanu Reeves – Reese Witherspoon, sci-fi romance Passengers, acquired the Judi Dench movie Philomena, and will partner on Suite Francaise with TF1 and eOne.
Passengers is a sci-fi romance drama from an indie concept script that has been circulating for a few years but only gathered steam once Keanu Reeves and Reese Witherspoon signed on.
Reeves is one of thousands of people on a spacecraft being transported to a distant colony planet. A malfunction in one of the sleep chambers awakens him 90 years before anyone else. Faced with dying alone, he awakens a sleeping passenger (Witherspoon), and a unique love story begins.
Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones), will make his directorial debut from a script by Jon Spaihts (Prometheus). TWC paid for the rights to distribute and market. Wayfare’s Ben Browning will produce with Reeves and Stephen Hamel. Shooting is scheduled to start later this year.
Suite Francaise is next on the TWC’s Cannes acquisitions, starring a Weinstein favorite, Michelle Williams (My Week With Marilyn). Matthias Schoenaerts and Kristin Scott Thomas also star in the drama based on the 1940’s novel by Irene Nemirovsky about a young woman living with her controlling mother-in-law in Nazi-occupied France who falls in love with a French officer.
The film is produced by Qwert Films, Michael Kuhn, Andrea Cornwell, and Xavier Marchand for eOne. France’s TF1 acquired the rights to the unfinished novel in 2007. Harvey Weinstein will be executive producer.
According to The Wrap, TWC plopped down $6 million for Stephen Frears’ Philomena, starring Judi Dench, Steve Coogan and Charlie Murphy, about an Irish woman searching for her adult son, who was taken away from her decades ago when she was forced to live in a convent. Screenplay by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope.
We’ll keep you posted, TWC isn’t finished shopping.
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