NEON and Hulu have acquired North American rights to Céline Sciamma’s Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, which premiered in Cannes and sparked a bidding war that also included offers from Sony Pictures Classics and Netflix.
The deal continues the output licensing agreement between the two companies; Neon will release the film theatrically this year and is also planning an awards campaign, the film will then stream on Hulu. It was negotiated by Jeff Deutchman on behalf of NEON and Hulu and Fionnuala Jamison from mk2 films, which is representing world rights.
Since premiering in Cannes Competition last week, Sciamma’s French language film has prompted positive reviews and early talk of it being a strong contender for this year’s Palme d’Or.
Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luana Bajrami and Valeria Golino star in the period story of a painter who is commissioned to do a wedding portrait of the reluctant bride-to-be without her finding out. Observing her by day and painting her by night, an intimacy grows between the two women.
Curzon acquired UK rights to Portrait Of A Lady On FIre pre-Cannes.
NEON also has rights to Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite, which screened in Cannes Competition this year.
Mk2 has rights to five Cannes Competition titles this year, the other four are: Mati Diop’s Atlantics, Xavier Dolan’s Matthias And Maxime, Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers and Justine Triet’s Sybil.
Earlier this month, Disney took full operational control of Hulu. The partnership with NEON sees the SVoD service take exclusive streaming rights to films released theatrically by the distributor.
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