SXSW 2011: Anchor Bay Sails Off With The Divide
Another major genre deal was made this evening at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas as one of the horror genre’s best friends has made off with what is potentially one of the festival’s best films.
According to Deadline in the biggest deal of SXSW this year and possibly ever for the Austin fest, Anchor Bay paid low seven figures for U.S. rights to the Xavier Gens directed genre thriller The Divide. Multiple territories are still in play. France was acquired by BAC Films and a deal will be made shortly for Canada, with Anchor Bay a contender for that territory as well. Content Film is handling international.
The film stars Michael Biehn, Rosanna Arquette (David Cronenberg’s Crash), Courtney B. Vance (“Law & Order: Criminal Intent”), and Lauren German, an actress whose credits include The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hostel 2.
“Director Xavier Gens follows his $99 million grossing ‘Hitman’ with THE DIVIDE – a high concept post-apocalyptic thriller that opens with pandemonium and a chaotic sprint towards the basement of a New York apartment building, just moments before the city outside is decimated…
When a cataclysmic explosion devastates New York, eight strangers take refuge in the basement of their apartment building, a converted fallout shelter designed by their paranoid superintendent Mickey. With just three connecting rooms it’s barely big enough, but with stockpiles of food and water, the group are at least safe from the horrors outside, and they settle in and attempt to fathom the catastrophe that has ended the lives of so many of their loved ones.
But suddenly men in HAZMAT suits storm their shelter and open fire. The strangers join forces in a desperate bid to take on this enemy, with no one understanding what these HAZMATS are looking for and what drives them to be so merciless.
With fatalities on both sides and the remaining HAZMATS temporarily pushed back and locked out, the worst is yet to come for the group. Cabin fever sets in as the perception of the shelter shifts from safe haven to claustrophobic rat-trap. Fear of radiation-poisoning and dwindling supplies play on their minds, while the young, beautiful Eva has more immediate worries… Her fiancé Sam is weaker than the other males, who are slowly starting to regress into ruthless, violent predators.
As tension mounts, their sanctuary becomes a living hell, and with Sam powerless to protect Eva, she must rely on her wits to save herself from becoming at the mercy of the pack in a thrilling final act.
With twists and turns throughout, and no way of knowing who will make it out alive, THE DIVIDE is an action packed psychological thriller that combines ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ with ‘Lord of the Flies’. To survive the end of the world, you first must survive each other…”
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