Hold onto your seats, folks, because we’ve got some exciting news! Netflix has just finalized an $11M deal for North American rights to the Todd Haynes-directed drama, May December, starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. This is the biggest deal to come out of Cannes so far, and it’s a much-needed boost of optimism for the North American marketplace for Cannes films. The film premiered at Cannes last Saturday evening and received an 8-minute standing ovation and positive reviews. What’s even more unusual is that Netflix rarely takes North American rights, so this is truly an exceptional situation.
May December tells the story of a scandalous romance between a married woman and a 13-year-old, which was a tabloid staple 20 years ago. Moore’s character served time for seducing an underage teen, but eventually married the youth, and they moved away to raise a family and live quietly. The film’s trigger is the interaction between the couple (Charles Melton plays the husband) and an actress (Portman) who travels to Maine to study the life of the woman she will play in a film. Sparks fly between the three of them as unresolved issues resurface in a romantic drama that reunites the director with Moore after they made Oscar nominee Far From Heaven together.
As the crowd of buyers and sellers head home from Cannes, this deal livens the potential for more. We’d heard of as many as five suitors before Netflix prevailed on May December. Coming into Cannes, there was a surplus of packages, and we’ve now seen a handful of well-reviewed festival films alongside premieres that came with domestic distribution in place, such as Apple’s Martin Scorsese-directed Killers of the Flower Moon and A24’s Jonathan Glazer-directed The Zone of Interest, both of which are likely to feature in the Oscar race.
International distributors have reported a strong market, but this, and the deal we told you about for The End We Start From, have been among the only splashy North American pacts to have happened on the ground, where a writers’ strike has hobbled a business that was already seeing a reduction in big acquisitions from the streamers. The thinking coming in is that sellers would see a premium for completed films that can be slotted on slates, and packages that can mobilize quickly post-strike. This deal could help loosen the deal logjam.
May December is produced by Will Ferrell and Jessica Elbaum of Gary Sanchez, Killer Films’ Christine Vachon and Pam Koffler, and Natalie Portman and Sophie Mas. Grant S. Johnson and Tyler W. Koney also produced and fully financed through their respective companies Project Infinity and Taylor & Dodge. Haynes is repped by CAA and Cinetic Media’s John Sloss.
