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Saturday
13Jun2009

Danny Boyle Signs Three-Year Deal with Searchlight

DateSaturday, June 13, 2009 at 1:03AM
Fox Searchlight did not become the new standard for lower budget Oscar bait by accident. It is a well run boutique studio that has placed a film in the Best Picture race in four of the last five years, winning the highest award in film for Slumdog Millionaire.

Now Fox Searchlight has locked up the director of Slumdog, Danny Boyle, for a three-year deal, a production agreement that also includes Pathe Pictures. So Boyle will now have whatever projects he chooses to do in the next three years co-financed by the two studios, which, as you can imagine, is a good thing for a director like Boyle who prefers to work a little outside the mainstream.

We recently reported that Boyle was looking at adapting Maximum City, a critical sort of non-fiction guide to Mumbai that he used to fill in the gaps while working on Slumdog, but The Los Angeles Times says he might also make a gritty bio-pic about mountain climber Aron Ralston, who got pinned by a rock in 2003 and amputated part of his own arm so he could escape.

For the moment, Boyle is calling his own shots, so if there's a project he prefers over the other, I think he'll have no trouble getting it made. I also would expect there to be a distinct possibility of a return to the 28 Later franchise, which Boyle expressed to me he was eager to revisit. Both of those films were Searchlight, and both performed well for the studio.

If Boyle can come up with a good idea for what we would assume to be 28 Months Later, that could a second film in the deal. From Fox's perspective it makes sense to line that up under the current arrangement to maximize the talents of an Oscar-winning director. I don't see more than two movies coming out of this, however. Boyle has been promoting Slumdog since September, so I'm sure he'll take a break before making his decision.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | CommentPost a Comment |

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