Buyers take WestEnd's Manglehorn

Al Pacino stars as a former criminal living a boring life until he goes back to his old ways. “The script is very strong. It’s a very different tone to Joe, and is much more humorous and tragically comical,” WestEnd MD Eve Schoukroun told Screen.

The new film starts shooting in October with Worldview again financing; WestEnd is also selling Joe, which was very well received in Venice ahead of its Toronto premiere on Monday. “I’m very excited to work with David and Worldview again,” Schoukroun said.

Other forthcoming shoots for WestEnd are Chris Eigeman’s political drama Midnight Sun set to shoot in October starring Jesse Eisenberg, Emile Hirsch and Diane Kruger; and Stephen Herek’s The Great Gilly Hopkins to star Kathy Bates and Danny Glover (with Bob Berney on board for US rights).

WestEnd’s TIFF films also include Ralph Fiennes’ The Invisible Woman, Yuval Adler’s Israeli drama Bethlehem and Jeremiah Chechik’s romantic comedy The Right Kind of Wrong.

With Bethlehem and Joe getting strong reviews in Venice, and The Invisible Woman in Telluride, Schoukroun said a number of offers are on the table ahead of the films’ screenings here. “It’s amazing for us to have such good reviews across the board. We need to turn the critical acclaim into concerte success,” she said.

Now shooting is Rio I Love You, with shoots wrapped for the Carlos Saldanha and Im Sang-soo segments, Stephan Elliott now shooting and Nabine Labaki and Fernando Meirelles set to shoot soon. That project will be sold theatrically but also with VOD runs.

Yesterday WestEnd revealed its pick up of documentary Inside Out: The People’s Art Project, a feature documentary about participants in French artist JR’s worldwide art project of the same name. That one will be eyed for theatrical releases as well as VOD and event screenings involving the artist.

“I think we will do more documentaries if they have an edge and an in-built audience,” Schoukroun added.

WestEnd also has Scottish drama The Silent Storm from writer/director Corinna Villari-McFarlane in post; Damian Lewis and Andrea Riseborough star. “The performances were great and the script was so sophisticated and smart psychologically,” Schoukroun added. Bond producer Barbara Broccoli executive produces.

Schoukroun would like to see the London-based sales company take on even more projects in future, while keeping the boutique approach to films the team is passoinate about. “We cherry pick titles. We have so much time to take care of movies,” she notes. Currently WestEnd works on about three films (delivered) each year. “We’ve built real relationships with distributors in the last five years. They trust us, they trust our tastes. We’re not going to deliver bad movies.”

“We don’t just want female dramas,” she added. “We’d like more genre films and films that are straightforwardly commercial.”