Apple has signed the largest deal for the 2022 Virtual Sundance Film Festival. It secured worldwide rights of Cooper Raiff’s-directed film. Cha Cha Real SmoothFor around $15 million. Since January 23, when the picture premiered in the US Dramatic Competition, the streamer has been the leading contender for the picture.
Pic is Raiff’s followup to his 2020 SXSW Grand Jury Prize–winning debut feature, Shithouse. He plays a directionless college graduate in New Jersey who gets over his head in a relationship with a young mom and her autistic teenage daughter, as he works a job party-starting bar and bat mitzvahs of his younger brother’s classmates. Picturestart and Endeavor Content co-financed the movie. The picture is very popular. It stars Raiff as Dakota Johnson, Leslie Mann and Evan Assante.
Raiff wrote the script, and he produced it with Johnson, Ro.Donnelly, Erik Feig, and Jessica Switch. Shayne FiskeGoldner, Jeff Valeri, and Julia Hammer are the executive producers.
WME, ICM and Endeavor Content facilitated the transaction.
It is below the $25million Apple paid last Sundance. CODAIt remains the festival’s highest-ever attendance, but is significantly higher than the $7.5 million Searchlight/Hulu spent. Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. This morning, Latter was closed for US rights.