By Lindsey Bahr, Film Writer
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) --In its third major buy of the Sundance Film Festival, Amazon Studios has acquired the world rights for the inspirational comedy "Brittany Runs a Marathon " for $14 million.
Deadline first reported the news of the acquisition Wednesday.
The film stars Jillian Bell as an aimless 20-something who decides to start getting her life together and train for a marathon.
Amazon Studios has been spending big at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, which wraps up on Feb. 3.
It also bought the distribution rights to Mindy Kaling's comedy "Late Night," for $13 million, and the CIA torture investigation drama "The Report," starring Adam Driver and Annette Bening, for $14 million.
In past years Amazon has had successes with Sundance buys like "The Big Sick" and "Manchester By the Sea."
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More