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Sony Pictures has reupped its first-look deal with Escape Artists, the shingle run by Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal and Steve Tisch.
The three year renewal, non-exclusive in nature, extends the company’s stay on the lot, its home since 1998, through 2015.
Escape Artists is an independently financed shingle whose first movie was A Knight’s Tale, starring Heath Ledger. The company’s more recent credits include the Will Smith movies The Pursuit of Happyness and Seven Pounds, plus The Taking of Pelham 123. Non-Sony credits include movies such as Knowing, Summit’s Nicolage Cage hit, and Paramount’s The Weather Man.
Next up, the company is partnering with Mandate Pictures and Management 360 to produce Great Hope Springs, starring Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, and Steve Carell. Sony is releasing the movie with MGM in North America next December.
Other Escape Artists project in development with Sony/Columbia include Sex Tape, with Nicholas Stoller attached to direct and Jason Segel attached to star; The Equalizer, the 1980s TV shot being remade as Denzel Washington vehicle and being produced with Alex Siskind; Masters of the Universe, based on the Mattel toyline; and How To Disappear Completely, written by Ed Solomon and based on the Swedish film Vitus.
“We have been partners with Todd, Jason, and Steve for more than a decade and we trust them implicitly for a simple reason: they have first-rate taste,” said Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal in a statement. “They carefully choose the projects that they want to make and they have a very focused and disciplined development process. We couldn’t be more thrilled to continue our collaboration with them.”
