Curzon Artificial Eye has swooped on four buzz titles at the Cannes Film Festival, acquiring UK and Eire rights to Lars Von Trier´s The House That Jack Built, Shia LaBeouf-starrer Borg vs McEnroe, Joachim Lafosse´s After Love and Niall McCann´s Lost in France.
The pre-buy of serial killer drama The House That Jack Built continues the distributor´s long-standing relationship with the controversial Danish director, stretching back to Antichrist and includes Melancholia and Nymphomaniac Volumes I & II. The deal was negotiated with Susan Wendt at TrustNordisk.
The $9.8m project will shoot in Sweden this year, before a Copenhagen shoot in 2017. Zentropa producer Louise Vesth revealed details of the highly-anticipated feature to Screen in Cannes earlier this week, when several early deals were revealed.
The film, originally envisioned as a TV series, is told from the point of view of Jack, a serial killer who aspires to commit the perfect murder over a decade of practice. Set in Washington State during the 1970s and 80s, at a time before DNA evidence was used in murder cases, the feature has yet to be cast.
TrustNordisk had planned to start sales in earnest after the cast was announced, but found that buyers were eager to secure the next project from Von Trier.
Curzon Artificial Eye managing director Louisa Dent said: “We look forward to seeing what Lars does with The House That Jack Built with the usual mixture of high excitement and slight trepidation.”