Anna Daniels
Neon has had a banner year since picking up the U.S. distribution rights to Parasite, ushering the film to a history-making Best Picture win at the 2020 Oscars. Now the indie film distributor has won the domestic rights to the Nicolas Cage revenge thriller Pig and the Sundance favorite Possessor, directed by Brandon Cronenberg.
Variety reports that Neon, the U.S. distributor behind Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning film Parasite, has won the domestic rights to the Nicolas Cage-starring revenge thriller Pig, directed by first-time filmmaker Michael Sarnoski.
Written and directed by Sarnoski, Pig stars Cage as “a reclusive truffle hunter in Oregon whose prize hunting pig is kidnapped, forcing him to return to old stomping grounds in Portland and confront his past.” The film also stars Hereditary‘s Alex Wolff, and is based on a story by Sarnoski and Vanessa Block, who also produced alongside Pulse Films.
Neon won the rights in a heated bidding war last week that involved “numerous competitors.” Based on the film’s premise of a man and his animal in the American frontier, I’d guess one of those competitors is fellow indie wunderkind A24. (Don’t worry A24, you still have the lovely First Cow.) Endeavor Content, which first showed the promo footage for Pig at February’s Berlin Film Festival, is continuing to seek international partners.
Neon continued its hot streak with the acquisition of the U.S. rights to Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor, a sci-fi thriller starring Andrea Riseborough as a corporate agent who works for a “secretive organization using brain-implant technology to inhabit other people’s bodies and commit assassinations for high-paying clients,” according to Neon’s press release. The film, which /Film reviewer Chris Evangelista wants everyone to know, “rules,” debuted in January to the Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews, including ours.
“Neon is a hugely exciting distributor, and I’ve been eager to work with them for a while now. I’m thrilled they are taking on ‘Possessor’ in collaboration with Well Go USA, who made production of the film possible,” Cronenberg said in a statement.
Neon’s acquisitions are a nice return to regular movie news as the industry continues to stay at a standstill in the wake of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has shuttered movie theaters around the country and forced studios to indefinitely delay major releases. Despite the demand for early digital releases and Neon’s own partnership with Hulu, Neon still plans to release Pig at a to-be-determined date. No release date has yet been set for Possessor.
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Written by: Slash
