Sony Pictures Classics Buys Up "Micmacs"

By Chase Kahn

Around this time every year, smaller films are picked up for distribution like hot cakes by independent branches of heavier suited studios -- although some movies still managed to go un-picked (Me and Orson Welles). With the Cannes Film Festival behind us, Toronto next week and the Telluride underway, we're going to see a lot of these.

The latest is French auteur Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs, picked up by Sony Pictures Classics for U.S. distribution for, "just north of $1 million."

Jeunet, who directed the surreal City of Lost Children (1995) and Amelie (2001), returns with a twisted revenge story likely more in-line with the director's earlier work. Micmacs is described as the story of guy (Dany Boon) who takes a bullet in the head and barely survives. He is helped by a group of strange people and will search for revenge against the illegal gun traders who provoked his misfortune.

Buyers have not seen the completed film, with only a promo revealed at Cannes. It is slated to play at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 15th. Consider my curiosity piqued. (I'm guessing that's the French International Poster on the right, distributed by Warner Bros. overseas.)