Berlin Hot List: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chloe Grace Moretz Films Among Festival’s Buzziest Projects

Kicking off 2022 with yet another online-only film market will be “bittersweet,” says Tamara Nagahiro of sales group Grandave International. She’s one of the hundreds of international film execs forced to exchange hotel suites for Zoom meeting rooms after Berlin’s European Film Market, which runs Feb. 10-17, went all-virtual in response to a surge in COVID-19 infections in Germany. The health of the indie film market will be put to the test at EFM 2022, as both sellers and distributors try to assess the impact of the pandemic on the global business.

“You are seeing increasing business from the streamers, in places like Latin America and other major territories, with the rise of HBO Max and other new platforms,” notes Nagahiro, whose EFM slate includes the heist thriller Shelter from Nuyorican director Anthony Nardolillo. “But it’s become harder and harder for a film to go theatrical,” he adds. “There seems to be just the big-budget, superhero-style films and your art house festival hits, and not much in between.”

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But a raft of pickups out of Sundance, from both streamers —AppleTV+’s $15 million deal for Dakota Johnson dramedy Cha Cha Real Smooth —and theatrical buyers —Fox Searchlight’s taking U.S. rights on Emma Thompson comedy Good Luck to You, Leo Grande for $7.5 million, Sony Pictures Classics paying $5 million for rights in North America, and a good chunk of the rest of the world, for Bill Nighy-starrer Living, shows there is still an appetite for indie films, especially ones with A-list names.

Berlin is unlikely to see many mega-deals this year, but buyers in the market for smaller art house and genre films will have their pick, with an impressive selection of new projects featuring the likes of Tom Hanks, Saoirse Ronan, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Chloë Grace-Moretz.

White Night

DIRECTOR Anne Sewitsky
STARS Chloë Grace Moretz, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
BUZZ This true-life drama, starring Grace Moretz as a former cultist and survivor of the Jonestown massacre, and Gordon-Levitt as infamous cult leader Jim Jones, looks a non-brainer for high-end buyers worldwide.
SALES FilmNation

A Man Called Otto

DIRECTOR Marc Forster
STARS Tom Hanks, Mariana Treviño, Rachel Keller
BUZZ This long-in-development adaptation (by Finding Neverland and Life of Pi writer David Magee) of cross-over Swedish hit A Man Called Ove, featuring Hanks as a curmudgeonly widower who begins a reluctant friendship with his new neighbors, is certain to spark a bidding war among high-end indie distributors, if a global streamer doesn’t pick it up first.
SALES STX International/ CAA Media Finance/Lichter Grossman Nichols Adler Feldman & Clark

Morning

DIRECTOR Justin Kurzel
STARS Laura Dern, Benedict Cumberbatch, Noah Jupe
BUZZ A high-concept gem for the art-house crowd, this sci-fi drama, set in a near future where society has done away with the need for sleep, is certain to pull in bids from both streamers and traditional distribs, particularly given its awards-heavy cast of Dern and Cumberbatch (both of whom executive produce).
SALES HanWay Films/ CAA Media Finance/UTA Independent Film

Berlin Nobody

DIRECTOR Jordan Scott
STARS Eric Bana, Kiernan Shipka
BUZZ Bana plays a psychologist and cult specialist racing against time to save his rebellious teenage daughter (Shipka) in this Ridley Scott-produced feature, which has the making of the sort of high-concept, mid-budget thriller that both streamers and indie distributors are hungry for.
SALES Protagonist/augenschein sales

Rich Flu

DIRECTOR Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
STARS Rosamund Pike
BUZZ The new social commentary thriller from The Platform helmer Gaztelu-Urrutia —here the wealthy are being wiped out by a strange pandemic —seems a lock for a global streamer or a studio pick up, though ambitious indies could also get a look in.
SALES Sierra/Affinity, CAA Media Finance

Eileen

DIRECTOR William Oldroyd
STARS Anne Hathaway, Thomasin McKenzie
BUZZ This female-focused thriller, based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s bestselling novel about two very different women who work in a youth prison, should have strong cross-over appeal, particularly given its A-list cast.
SALES Endeavor Content, WME Independent

Starve Acre

DIRECTOR Daniel Kokotajlo
STARS Matt Smith, Morfydd Clark
BUZZ Horror remains one of the few surefire genres, and this supernatural frightener, set in rural England in the 1970s, could tap into the same global audience that made folk horror Midsummer a sleeper hit.
SALES Cornerstone

The Outrun

DIRECTOR Nora Fingscheidt
STARS Saoirse Ronan
BUZZ Darker drama can be a hard sell for the indie market but the star power of four-time Oscar nominee Ronan, and the track record of director Fingscheidt, hot off the one-two success of 2019 debut System Crasher and Netflix hit The Unforgivable, should make this project, an adaptation of the Amy Liptrot’s best-selling memoir about a woman recovering from addiction, who returns to her childhood farm on Scotland’s Orkney Islands, a must-have for specialty buyers.
SALES Protagonist/CAA Media Finance

Just Watch Me

STARS Gerard Butler
BUZZ For the indie action crowd, Butler is as close as it gets to a sure thing. This package, from John Wick and Nobody screenwriter Derek Kolstand, based on the Jeff Lindsay novel, sees the Scottish star play Riley Wolfe, a master thief who only targets the 0.1 percent.
SALES Mossbank

All Fun and Games

DIRECTORS Ari Costa and Eren Celeboglu
STARS Asa Butterfield, Natalia Dyer
BUZZ A youth-skewing horror title sure to be snatched up by international buyers, this low-budget, high-concept feature from Joe and Anthony Russo’s AGBO and Greenland producer Anton sees Sex Education star Butterfield and Stranger Things‘ Dyer caught in a kids’ game that turns deadly.
SALES Anton

The Forger

DIRECTOR Maggie Peren
STARS Louis Hofmann, Luna Wedler
BUZZ Quality WW2 dramas out of Germany have a built-in international arthouse audience and this feature, based on the memoirs of Samson “Cioma” Schönhaus, a Jew who hid in plain sight in Berlin in the 1940s, forging identity documents for himself and others, offers a twist on the Holocaust story, with an upbeat and optimistic central character, played by Dark star Hofmann.
SALES Beta Cinema

The Bricklayer

DIRECTOR Renny Harlin
STAR Aaron Eckhart
BUZZ After teaming with Millennium and Gerard Butler’s shingle G-Base on the Has Fallen films, a global sales success, Eckhart gets his own shot at an action-thriller franchise, playing an ex-CIA agent forced out of retirement to take down an international conspiracy.
SALES Millennium Media

Peter von Kant

DIRECTOR François Ozon
STARS Denis Ménochet, Isabelle Adjani, Hanna Schygulla
BUZZ French auteur Ozon is targeting the art house market with this cineastes’ delight: a loose, and gender-flipped, adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 classic The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Ozon moves the action from the world of fashion to the world of film with Ménochet playing a director (bearing a strong resemblance to Fassbinder) who falls in love with a handsome young man he takes in and promises to turn into a star.
SALES: Playtime

Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush

DIRECTOR Andreas Dresen
BUZZ Berlin is always a strong market for political films, and this new drama from German art house favorite Dresen (Stopped on Track) — which chronicles the true story of a Turkish-German housewife who fought the U.S. government for the release of her son, falsely imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay — has specialty release written all over it.
SALES The Match Factory

Untitled Johnny Depp

DIRECTOR Maïwenn
STARS Johnny Depp
BUZZ Depp might be persona non grata in Hollywood right now, but the Pirates of the Caribbean star is still a major box office draw internationally, and this French project, in which he plays King Louis XV of France, should have no problem finding takers.
SALES Wild Bunch International

This story first appeared in the Jan. 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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