Heist Thriller ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ Acquired by Neon Out of Toronto

Neon has acquired the North American rights to “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” a heist thriller that made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this week and was being sought by multiple studios.

The film from Daniel Goldhaber played in the Platform section of TIFF and is one of the first major acquisitions from the festival. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” follows a crew of young environmental activists who execute a daring mission to sabotage an oil pipeline in a taut and timely thriller that is part high-stakes heist, part radical exploration of direct action as climate activism.

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The film stars Ariela Barer (“Runaways,” “Atypical”) alongside Kristine Froseth, Lukas Gage, Forrest Goodluck, Sasha Lane, Jayme Lawson, Marcus Scribner, Jake Weary, Irene Bedard and Olive Jane Lorraine.

Goldhaber co-wrote the script with Jordan Sjol, and Goldhaber also produced.

“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” was written, cast, financed, and prepped in only seven months with Lyrical Media and Spacemaker financing. The film was produced by Isa Mazzei, Goldhaber, Barer, David Grove Churchill Viste and Adam Wyatt Tate with production company Chrono. Alex Black and Alex Hughes also serve as producers, and Danielle Mandel is a co-producer. Jon Rosenberg, Riccardo Maddalosso, Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck, Jordan Sjol, Natalie Sellers and Eugene Kotlyarenko serve as executive producers.

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“When we started working on this movie, Neon was a dream distribution partner,” filmmakers Daniel Goldhaber, Ariela Barer, Jordan Sjol and Daniel Garber said in a statement. “They’ve done such incredible work supporting movies that are on the cutting edge of cinema and are constantly thinking of new, out-of-the-box ways to connect audiences and films. We are so lucky to have found a partner that has so passionately engaged with this project, and we could not be more thrilled to be collaborating with them to bring ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ to theaters across America.”

Neon was expected to be one of the potential major players on the TIFF market, despite the fact that the indie distributor already had four films on the TIFF slate, including Laura Poitras’ Venice-winning documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” the Palme d’Or winner “Triangle of Sadness,” the David Bowie doc “Moonage Daydream” and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Broker.”

The deal for the film was negotiated by Jeff Deutchman and Mason Speta for Neon with CAA Media Finance on behalf of the filmmakers.

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