A24 may finally be in the Oscar business with “A Most Violent Year” this season, but the indie distributor is stepping things up even more by getting into the Gillian Flynn business. The company is has just announced the co-acquisition (along with DirecTV) of Gilles Paquet-Brenner's adaptation of the “Gone Girl” author's “Dark Places,” starring Charlize Theron.
In the film, Theron plays a woman who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child and is forced to confront the events of that day by a secret society obsessed with solving notorious crimes. The novel predates Flynn's mega-best-seller “Gone Girl,” but it was very well received in its own right and landed at #15 on the New York Times Best Seller List for hardcover fiction in May of 2009.
Paquet-Brenner – who also directed 2010's “Sarah's Key” – penned the adaptation himself.
The A24/DirecTV partnership has seen the release other films like “Enemy,” “Life After Beth” and “Revenge of the Green Dragons” exclusively during a 30-day window prior to theatrical release through the satellite service. Upcoming titles include Atom Egoyan's “Captive” and Julius Avery's “Son of a Gun.”