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Toronto: Paladin Acquiring ‘Midnight’s Children’, Adaptation Of Salman Rushdie Novel

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Thursday September 20, 2012 @ 2:45pm PDTTags: Paladin, Salman Rushdie, Toronto Film Festival
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: One of the last buzz titles at the Toronto Film Festival is about to find a distributor. I’m told that Mark Urman’s Paladin/108 Media is acquiring all U.S. rights to Midnight’s Children, the Deepa Mehta-directed adaptation of the 1981 Salman Rushdie novel. The film will get a platform theatrical release in April. Mehta helmed the Oscar-nominated Water and this film is based on one of Rushdie’s most famous Booker Prize-winning works. Rushdie wrote the script with Mehta and he attended the film’s gala premiere in Toronto.

Midnight’s Children is a lavish period drama about India’s shift from British colonialism to independence. The story is about two infants born on midnight August 15, 1947, the moment India achieved independence. The infants are switched at birth — one rich being raised poor and the poor child is raised rich. The story contains some magical elements, but it is a symbol of the destiny for India itself, played out over three decades. The film was financed by Telefilm Canada and Echo Lake and produced by David Hamilton, with FilmNation brokering worldwide sales.

This will mark the second Toronto deal for Paladin, which acquired the Michel Gondry-directed The We And The I.

Now, is anybody going to buy Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder? I realize the film didn’t get nearly as rousing a reaction at Toronto as did Malick’s last Oscar-nominated film The Tree Of Life. But it’s Terry frickin’ Malick, after all. There’s no way he walks away from a major festival without a distribution deal.

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2011 Toronto Festival Fills Out Slate And Sets Maverick Lecture Program

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Tuesday August 23, 2011 @ 5:42am PDTTags: Barrymore, Christopher Plummer, Dee Rees, Deepa Mehta, Francis Ford Coppola, Gus Van Sant, Jonathan Demme, Michael Barker, Neil Young, Pariah, Restless, Salman Rushdie, Tilda Swinton, Tom Bernard, Toronto Film Festival
Mike Fleming

The 2011 Toronto International Film Festival has filled out the rest of its slate, which consists of 268 features and 68 short films that will unspool next month. The fest announced that the likes of Brad Pitt (Moneyball), … Read More »

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FilmNation Grabs Mike Jones Spec ‘In The Event Of A Moon Disaster’

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Monday August 22, 2011 @ 11:38am PDTTags: Aaron Ryder, Edgar Allan Poe, FilmNation Entertainment, Glen Basner, Hugh Laurie, James McTeigue, Jeff Nichols, Jennifer Lawrence, John Cusack, Matthew McConaughey, Pedro Almodovar, Reese Witherspoon, Salman Rushdie
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: In competitive bidding, FilmNation Entertainment has acquired In the Event of a Moon Disaster, a Mike Jones spec script that re-imagines the first moon mission. In this version, disaster strikes and the astronauts find themselves up against … Read More »

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Salman Rushdie Enters TV With Drama Project For Showtime

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Thursday March 10, 2011 @ 7:55pm PSTTags: Salman Rushdie, Showtime
Nellie Andreeva

British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie is venturing into screenwriting with Next People, a drama series project for Showtime. Rushdie will write the script for the project, which dissects different aspects of contemporary American life. Although Rushdie is considered a British writer … Read More »

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Ex-e-Book Foes Random House And Andrew Wylie Make Salman Rushdie Memoir Deal

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Thursday October 21, 2010 @ 7:01am PDTTags: Andrew Wylie, Andrew Wylie Random House, Book Deals, Book Publishing, Books, E-Book Rights, Markus Dohle Random House, Random House, Salman Rushdie
Mike Fleming

BREAKING: The e-book rift between Random House Worldwide chairman Markus Dohle and lit agent Andrew Wylie really is in the past history books. The duo has formalized a far-reaching deal to publish a memoir by Salman Rushdie. The book will … Read More »

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