Berlin 2012: Oscar Hopeful 'In Darkness' Locks Up Sales

BERLIN - Beta Cinema has closed multiple sales on two of its top titles at the Berlin market, closing major territories for the Oscar-nominated Holocaust drama In Darkness from director Agnieszka Holland  and U.S. and U.K. for German sci-fi horror film Hell.

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Arc Cinema picked up U.S. rights to Hell from first-time director Tim Fehlbaum with Lionsgate U.K. taking British distribution rights.

Beta also locked up Hell deals with France (Swift), Australia/New Zealand (Madman), Japan (New Select) and Poland (Against Gravity). Roland Emmerich executive produced Hell, which is set in a near future in which the sun has become blazing hot, drying up all water and leaving the earth a scorched wasteland.

Beta also closed multiple territories for Holland's In Darkness with distributors in Italy (Good Films), Japan (New Select), South Korea (Pure), China (Champs Lis) and Brazil (Conquest) signing up for the drama, one of this year's nominees for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. Already a box office hit in Poland, where it has earned more than $4.5 million at the box office, In Darkness starts today in U.S. theaters via Sony Pictures Classics.

Ahead of its market premiere in Berlin Friday, Beta also sold another Holocaust-themed drama, Rudolf van den Berg's Suskind, to Madman for Australian/New Zealand. Other deals include ones for German comedy Men In The City 2, which went to Russia (Luxor) and Turkey (Medyavizyon) and the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer, which was picked up by Rai Cinema for Italy and R Film in Turkey.