Director Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert starring Nicole Kidman and James Franco has been picked up by Atlas Distribution Co., marking the first time the entity will distribute a movie without Atlas Shrugged in the title.
Queen of the Desert tells the true story of Gertrude Bell, played by Kidman, who was a British spy, an archaeologist and more at the turn of last century and ended up playing a major role in establishing the modern state of Iraq. She wielded an enormous amount of power for a woman of her era.
Atlas Distribution was founded by John Aglialoro and Harmon Kaslow to distribute their trio of Atlas Shrugged movies, and they said a year ago they’d keep the company intact, infuse it with $25 million and release more films.
Queen of the Desert is the first in that effort, and it is planned for release in late September on a 1,000 screens.
The Atlas Shrugged movies, of course, were based on Ayn Rand’s novel of the same name that is infused with individualistic themes that Kaslow says are present in Queen of the Desert as well.
“Gertrude Bell was a real-life Randian hero,” Kaslow said. “This is exactly the type of film we hope to bring to the masses with Atlas Distribution — an incredible heroine who thought for herself, took orders from no one and had a lasting impact on the world.”
The film also stars Robert Pattinson as T.E. Lawrence, a contemporary of Bell’s who was immortalized in the 1962 epic film, Lawrence of Arabia. The movie is produced by Nick Raslan and Sierra/Affinity is handling international sales.
Here’s a HQ BTS picture of Robert Pattinson from ‘Screen International Stars of Tomorrow’
Wellington Films: Ten years ago today, we were in the photo-shoot for Screen International Stars of Tomorrow, alongside Eddie Redmayne, Robert Pattinson, David Oyelowo, Natalie Dormer, Dominic Cooper, Jamie Winstone and Tom Sturridge
Here’s the poster for Martin Koolhoven’s Brimstone for the Cannes Film Festival:
*NOTE* after a question by Martin Koolhoven via twitter about the grey of the ‘poster’, we’ve come to understand that it’s ‘market poster’ so no official poster!
Set in a remote stretch of Australia “ten years after the collapse” (as an opening title informs us), the stark sci-fi-tinged thriller, The Rover, introduces a world of arid reduction, where civilisation is hanging by a thread. The closest thing to the law are the army patrols that move from town to town, and the outback populace has responded in kind, namely with violence and debauchery. When the stony, enigmatic Eric (Guy Pearce) has his car stolen by a crew of criminals, he teams with the slow-witted but sweet dupe that they left behind (Robert Pattinson) to get it back.
Though the mention of cars, criminal gangs, and an Australian postapocalypse whip up instant memories of Mad Max, The Rover is no punked up, dystopic vision. This is an urgent, horribly familiar world with a smashed-to-bits moral compass. Thrilling, tightly characterised, and punctuated with neck-snapping jolts of violence, The Rover is a powerful meditation on the fragile nature of society itself.
“I wanted the movie to feel terrifying,” writer/director, David Michod (AnimalKingdom), told FilmInk of his sophomore effort. “I wanted it to feel intimidating and menacing. When you amp up the craziness of a world left after a post-apocalyptic event, you push the audience away. I wanted it to feel immediate. This is a movie about anger. The characters are angry about what has happened to the world. They’re suffering because of what’s being engineered all around them.”
Robert Pattinson
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Robert Pattinson
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