The distributor has prevailed in a bidding war to acquire UK rights to Summit International’s sold-out prestige title to be directed by Steve McQueen.

eOne is understood to have met the producers’ high asking price – said by some buyers to be in the region of a couple of million dollars – for McQueen’s eagerly anticipated follow-up to his current awards season contender Shame. Momentum is set to release Shame in the UK in January 2012.

12 Years A Slave is being produced by Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner’s Plan B and Bill Pohlad’s River Road Entertainment and will star Chiwetel Ejiofor, Pitt and McQueen stalwart Michael Fassbender.

John Ridley and McQueen adapted the screenplay from Solomon Northup’s novel about an educated black man who is kidnapped from New York and sold into slavery in Louisiana in the 1850s.

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