We we worried there for a second that Charlie Kaufman‘s surrealist directorial debut, “Synecdoche, New York,” was going to languish in limbo after it received mixed reviews at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in May, but it appears that Sony Pictures Classics is nearing final negotiations to put the film out for what the producers hope is a late 2008 Awards-season release.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, SPC are in “advanced negotiations” for domestic rights for the film in the low-seven figure range.
Costing $20 million film, the film is evidently “special effects-filled” and there’s still trimming to be done. The original cut was 4 hours and the Cannes cut was two-hours and four minutes, but apparently it’s still being whittled down by Kaufman.
The film spans the 40 year life of a theater director (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who ambitiously attempts to put on a play by creating a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse involving all the women who have been apart of his life (Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson and others). Meanwhile, a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his body’s autonomic functions and threatening the completion of his life’s work. Now if it will only play the New York Film Festival in September we’ll be pleased as punch.
Also, no word so far if movie fan bloggers will be as up in arms about this sale as they were when Sony Pictures Classics bought “The Wackness.”