What might become the biggest deal at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is Focus Features picking up the worldwide rights to Nocturnal Animals, fashion designer-turned-filmmaker Tom Ford’s follow-up to A Single Man, for $20 million.
The film, which will star Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams, hasn’t even started production yet, but Ford adapted it from Austin Wright’s 1993 novel “Tony and Susan,” the story of a woman who, when reading her ex-husband’s first novel, realizes she needs to confront her own past as she gets caught up in the life of the novel’s protagonist.
According to Deadline, Ford gave a presentation at the Carlton Hotel a couple days ago which led to a number of offers, although Ford initially planned to self-finance the film because he wanted to retain creative control during production and marketing.
Universal Pictures will help with distributing the film overseas.
This is a similar deal to the one Focus made for last year’s The Theory of Everything, which grossed $120 million worldwide and received five Oscar nominations with Eddie Redmayne receiving an Oscar for his performance. Before winning an Oscar for The King’s Speech, Colin Firth received a nomination for his performance in Ford’s A Single Man, which hit the festival circuit in 2009.
