Fox Searchlight Gets 'The Wreslter' for $4 Million

Even without being in theaters, The Wrestler was the biggest movie of the weekend. The Darren Aronofsky drama about a down on his luck professional wrestler played by Mickey Rourke won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday and then on Sunday, it became the first major purchase at the Toronto Film Festival. Anne Thompson of Variety reports in her blog that Fox Searchlight has picked up the film, and that couldn't be better news for The Wrestler. We've seen what Searchlight has been able to do with movies that have Oscar aspirations; in the past two years, Little Miss Sunshine and Juno grabbed eight Academy Award nominations and three wins, and the films made a combined $200 million. In that same time frame, they also had wins and eight total nominations for The Savages, The Last King of Scotland, Notes on a Scandal, and Once. The rights to The Wrestler were picked up for about $4 million, according to Thompson, beating the bids by Lionsgate, Overture, Sony, and The Weinstein Company. An Oscar push for Rourke was an essential part of the buy, so that means the film will have to be released in December, at least for a week in New York and Los Angeles. However, that's not really the way Searchlight does it. None of their recent Oscar nominees have been released so close to the deadline, and while I didn't know the Searchlight connection when I wrote about the film winning Venice this weekend, it now makes even more sense to put this film in theaters in late November, because the studio thrives on word-of-mouth, and that's tough to get on or after Christmas. Can the studio put together an effective campaign in two months? Well, they came to Toronto with something in mind, and considering this isn't their first rodeo, I think they can.

Comments

[Andy from Philly]

This movie was AMAZING! It is so refreshing to see REAL movies instead of the typical hollywood BS.