John Crowley’s adaptation of Colm Tóibin’s novel ‘Brooklyn’ - starring Saoirse Ronan as a young Irish woman who emigrates to America in the 1950s - has secured a number of distribution deals at this week’s American Film Market.
As IFTN exclusively revealed in April 2012, the film will partly shoot in Ireland - with principal photography set to commence in Spring 2014.
Represented by HanWay Films for international sales, ‘Brooklyn’ has signed deals with Lionsgate UK for distribution in the UK & Ireland and Transmission for distribution rights in Australia & New Zealand.
John Crowley won the Bafta for Best Director in 2008 for ‘Boy A’, about a young ex-convict released from prison following a murder he committed as a child, and recently directed ‘Closed Circuit’, starring Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall.
His breakthrough film was 2003’s ‘Intermission’, starring Colin Farrell and Cillian Murphy, which won four IFTA awards for Best Director (Crowley), Best Irish Film, Best Script (Mark Rowe) and Best Supporting Actor (David Wilmot).
‘Brooklyn’ is a co-production between Dublin’s Parallel Films and Wildgaze Films, and is supported by the Irish Film Board and BBC Films.
Along with Ronan, the cast includes Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson (‘About Time’, ‘Anna Karenina’); Emory Cohen (‘The Place Beyond the Pines’) and veteran actors Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters.
Producers on the film are Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey for Wildgaze ('Quartet', 'An Education'); and Alan Moloney for Parallel Films ('Albert Nobbs', 'Breakfast on Pluto', 'Intermission'), based on a screenplay adapted by Nick Hornby.
Dwyer and Posey also collaborated with Hornby on the Oscar-nominated ‘An Education’, which they produced and he scripted, and the forthcoming adaptation of his novel ‘A Long Way Down’. Posey also previously worked with Stephen Woolley on Neil Jordan’s ‘‘The Crying Game’.
The plot of 'Brooklyn' follows a young Irish woman, Nora, who departs her small town in Ireland for Brooklyn, where she falls in love with an Italian-American before a family tragedy ultimately leads her back home to Ireland.
The initial budget estimation for 'Brooklyn' was projected at €19m, with the Irish Film Board granting €20,000 in its funding round for the first quarter of 2013.
