Lasse Hallstrom’s well received Toronto premiere Salmon Fishing In The Yemen appeared bound for CBS Films on Sunday night after the distributor reportedly put an MG of around $4m on the table and not more than $5m as originally believed.

CBS Films was understood to have pulled ahead of Summit Entertainment and others for the cross-cultural dramedy starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt as negotiations with domestic sales agent UTA continued. Lionsgate handles international sales.

Meanwhile Midnight Madness premiere You’re Next and The Oranges were also among acquisition titles in the mix.

Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond The Pines starring Ryan Gosling – ubiquitous at the festival with starring roles in Drive and The Ides Of March – has attracted heat and domestic sales agent WME is keen to close a deal within days. CAA is co-representing the project.

Snoot Entertainment’s You’re Next directed by Adam Wingard played well to the late-night crowd on Saturday and studios and the major independents are circling. Domestic rights holder CAA is understood to be negotiating for a wide release to Wingard’s follow-up to his Toronto 2010 entry A Horrible Way To Die, and the agency has wasted little time in signing the writer-director.

Julian Farino’s dark comedy The Oranges with Hugh Laurie and Catherine Keener is generating heat for CAA, while buyers are circling Jennifer Westfeldt’s Friends With Kids. The latter originated through Red Granite, the upstart production and international sales outfit backed by South-East Asian and Middle Eastern investors. Cinetic is handling domestic rights.

Multiple offers are in on The Incident, the English-language horror story about cooks stranded in an insane asylum that is financed by SND and produced by Roy Lee’s Vertigo. Paradigm is holding out until after Monday’s world premiere in Madness.

Meanwhile the positive response to Bennett Miller’s festival entry Moneyball has re-energised his wrestling project Foxcatcher and positioned it squarely on Hollywood’s radar. The word in Toronto is that Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures is poised to come on board as financier.

Ellison made a splash in Cannes when she swooped on Terminator property rights. She is producing John Hillcoat’s Wettest County and Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, among others.

Topics