EXCLUSIVE: At long last, the opening-night film of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival has a distribution deal and a release date. Sony Pictures Classics acquired distribution rights in North America, France, India and several other Asian countries to After the Wedding, the Bart Freundlich-directed adaptation of Susanne Bier’s Oscar-nominated Danish film. Pic stars Michelle Williams, Julianne Moore, Billy Crudup and Abby Quinn. The film will be released in August.
After The Wedding got good reviews, with Oscar-bait performances for Williams and Moore. The filmmakers pondered several distribution offers, but Freundlich took his time finishing a film that was rushed to make Park City. SPC’s Michael Barker and Tom Bernard released Freundlich’s first film, The Myth of Fingerprints, and has done several with Moore including her Oscar-winning turn in Still Alice. They’ve reunited, and SPC plans an end-of-summer release leading into awards season.
Williams plays Isabel, a woman who has dedicated her life to working with the children in an orphanage in Calcutta. Theresa (Moore) is the multimillionaire head of a media company who lives with her artist husband (Crudup) and their twin boys in New York. When word comes to Isabel of a mysterious and generous grant for the financially struggling orphanage, she must travel to New York to meet the benefactor—Theresa—in person. From there is gets complicated.
The film is produced by Joel B. Michaels and Harry Finkel, a co-production between Ingenious Media and Riverstone Pictures. Nik Bower and Deepak Nayar are exec producers for Riverstone and Peter Touche and Andrea Scarso for Ingenious.
“I’ve known Michael and Tom for 23 years when we worked together on my first film,” Freundlich said. “They have impeccable taste, so it is very exciting, and great vote of confidence that they believe so wholeheartedly in After the Wedding.“
The deal was negotiated by Endeavor Content and Cornerstone Films on behalf of the filmmakers. Additional funding was provided by Rock Island Films.