Sundance Selects Picks Up Werner Herzog's 'Into the Abyss'

Sundance Selects has picked up North American rights to Werner Herzog’s upcoming documentary Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life ahead of the Telluride Film Festival, which begins Friday.

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The documentary, produced by Erik Nelson and exec produced by Dave Harding, Amy Briamonte, Henry Schleiff, Sara Kozak, Andre Singer, and Lucki Stipetic, explores a triple homicide case in Conroe, Texas, interviewing those involved, including a 28-year-old death row inmate who was executed just 8 days after appearing on-screen.

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Sundance Selects, a sister division of IFC Films, enjoyed a solid success with Herzog’s current documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which has grossed $5.2 million domestically.

Jonathan Sehring, president of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said, "Earlier this year, Werner Herzog took us to unseen Chauvet Cave in Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which became one of our company's most successful releases and the year's highest grossing documentary. Now he has gone a step further and shown us the human soul in one of his most remarkable films, Into the Abyss. This is a hard-hitting, emotional and enlightening film that probes a crime and the legacy of the people involved and shows Herzog to be one of our great filmmakers.“

Abyss was produced with Creative Differences and Investigation Discovery, and the deal was negotiated by Sehring and Betsy Rodgers, vp of business and Legal Affairs for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Nelson and Briamonte at Creative Differences with counsel from Marc Simon at Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard.