Copenhagen-based Smile Entertainment has acquired the Scandinavian rights to Paul Goldman's The Night We Called It A Day, which started shooting in Australia earlier this month for Scala Productions and Ocean Pictures.

The deal was negotiated between Smile's Timo T. Lahtinen and Scala's Nik Powell as an early pre-buy. International sales of the film are otherwise handled by Winchester Films.

The film stars Dennis Hopper as Frank Sinatra on his unfortunate tour to Australia in 1974, during which he entered into a fierce fight with both the Australian press and local unions. The conflict resulted in Sinatra and his entourage virtually being held prisoners in his luxury hotel suite for days, while a young local tour manager desperately tried to solve the crisis. The supporting cast includes Melanie Griffith, Portia De Rossi and David Hemmings.

Timo Lahtinen's distribution and production outfit Smile Entertainment has recently acquired a number of other titles for Scandinavia including Chen Kaige's award-winning Together, John Malkovich's directorial debut The Dancer Upstairs, Toni Kalem's A Slipping Down Life and Asif Kapadia's The Warrior.

Smile is also co-producing US director Reuben Leder's poltical thriller Baltic Storm which began shooting on location in Berlin on November 5. (Screendaily.com, Nov 7).