Cannes 2012: 'Thunder Run' Gets Funding Boost

Buyers’ confidence in Thunder Run, a CGI 3D action thriller set to go into production this summer, starring Gerard Butler, Sam Worthington and Matthew McConaughey, received a boost on the eve of the Marche du Film.

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The movie, being mounted by Brian Presley’s Freedom Films and Fred Malmburg’s Paradox Entertainment and directed by Simon West, has closed U.S. domestic P&A financing.

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The picture details the untold story of the dangerous and bloody capture of Baghdad by American forces at the onset of the Iraq War.

Set in April 2003, three battalions and fewer than a thousand men launched a violent thrust of tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles into the heart of a city of five million, igniting a three-day blitzkrieg, which military professionals often refer to as a lightning strike, or “thunder run.”

News that the domestic P&A funding is locked down will ensure a line outside Ashok Amritraj’s Hyde Park International, which is handling international sales on the war movie.

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Indie projects with a theatrical rollout plan in the U.S. are such a rarity these days that they instantly plant themselves on buyers’ acquistion wish lists.

Presley is producing alongside Jib Polhemus of The Graphic Film Company.

The script is adapted by Robert Port and Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down) from Thunder Run — The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad by Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent David Zucchino.

Freedom Films is represented by Jay Cohen of the Gersh Agency.