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Fox Searchlight pins ‘Wrestler’

In the first major buy of the Toronto International Film Festival, Fox Searchlight won an intense all-night bidding war for Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler,” which days before had won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Fest. Searchlight acquired U.S. rights for about $4 million.

After the packed screening of “The Wrestler” at Toronto’s Elgin, buyers huddled on the street and made their way to the Four Seasons Hotel to offer bids and pitch release plans. An Oscar-campaign for Mickey Rourke’s rough-and-tumble, vulnerable performance as a wrestler on the ropes was an essential component of the deal. Most distribs were offering a “Monster”-style Oscar-qualifying late-year platform with a wider release in January.

Wild Bunch’s Agnes Mentre and Vincent Maraval, who financed the film, ran the meetings with CAA and director Darren Aronofsky. There were multiple bids: besides Searchlight, Lionsgate, Overture, Weinstein Co. and Sony were in the running, while other buyers who didn’t call fast enough were told they were too late to enter the fray.

“Wild Bunch believed in Mickey Rourke,” Aronofsky said in his opening remarks onstage. “I’ve been a fan for so long. I heard stuff about him that turned out to be a lot of baloney. The man I met was an eggshell-fragile human being; the more I knew about him and the more colors I the more excited I was about the possibility of being able to photograph him and share him with the public, which for a long time has seen him as a tough guy. He’s a sweetheart.”

Source: Variety