ENJOY THE MOVIES
Sundance: Fox Searchlight Buys Choke for $5 Million!
by Alex Billington
January 22, 2008
In what I may already called the best sale of Sundance 2008, Fox Searchlight has bought Clark Gregg's adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel Choke for a reported $5 million! The deal closed at 5AM this morning after the world premiere of the film last night at 8:30PM at the Racquet Club Theatre. We've been following this film for quite a while and also happened to be at that very same world premiere last night, and I will confirm it was a great experience with plenty of post-movie positive buzz. Get ready to see Choke for yourselves sometime this year!
Choke stars Sam Rockwell as Victor Mancini. Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-school dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.
I caught the world premiere of Choke last night and certainly will confirm that it is one hell of a great film. It's no Fight Club, but it is a Chuck Palahniuk movie in its own right delivering a solid story with great comedy and a perfect performance by Sam Rockwell. It's not my own favorite movie of the fest, but I couldn't be happier seeing this get picked up by the best indie distributor out there. Fox Searchlight has put out some of the biggest indie hits - Napoleon Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno - and now it's time for Choke!
Choke was written and directed by actor-turned-director Clark Gregg as his first time feature in which he also co-stars in. If you haven't read the Chuck Palahniuk book, then click the cover below and grab a copy right now!
Update: Fox Searchlight has set a release date of August 1st, 2008 for Choke. The film will be released in tiers, similar to Juno, with mainstream cities like New York and Los Angeles first (on August 1st) and more cities to follow later in the month.
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5 Comments
1
amazing amazing. my favorite chuck p. book and i love sam rockwell. cant wait!
johnny b on Jan 22, 2008
2
heath ledger is dead!!!
scar on Jan 22, 2008
3
Yes it is very sad. Alex we need a post on this.
Stephen on Jan 22, 2008
4
I read it on absolutepunk.net and thought it might be a rumor so I headed here to find out... but no news so I dismissed it, but now it's on yahoo =( f---, the joker's gone
Alfredo on Jan 22, 2008
5
oh man. i saw that on the msn homepage. that sucks sooo bad, whatta terrible thing drugs can do.
Max on Jan 22, 2008
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