September 5_Dir Tim Fehlbaum

Source: Venice Film Festival

‘September 5’

Paramount Pictures has decided to give a theatrical release to September 5 in a move that drops the acclaimed newsroom drama from Venice and Telluride squarely into awards season.

‘September 5’: Venice Review

The studio’s Paramount Global stablemate Republic Pictures acquired rights in the summer to Tim Fehlbaum’s timely feature and took it out to the market.

Peter Sarsgaard and John Magaro star in the behind-the-scenes account of ABC Sports’ live coverage of the deadly terror attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics when the Palestinian Black September group took Israeli athletes hostage.

Paramount Global co-CEO and film head Brian Robbins and the film team saw the drama and decided to drop it into its autumn calendar. There will be an awards push, cementing the prospects of a film that immediately impressed on the Lido and was frequently name-checked by industry sources in Toronto, even though it did not play there.

September 5 will get a platform US release on November 27 before expanding in December. Paramount holds worldwide rights excluding Germany, Switzerland and Austria, where Constantin will release the film.

September 5 joins Paramount’s awards slate of Better Man, which premiered in Telluride, Gladiator II, and Transformers One.

Its arrival is good news for the awards season and bolsters what had been regarded as a light year in terms of best picture contenders. Earlier on Sunday Toronto International Film Festival announced that The Life Of Chuck had won the TIFF People’s Choice Award. That film lacks a US distributor but Sunday’s award may spark a US deal and change all that.

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