The winner of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival grand jury prize, Nanny, has sold to Blumhouse and Amazon Prime Video, nearly two months after making its debut at the virtual festival.
The horror drama comes from director Nikyatu Jusu and stars Anna Diop as a Senegalese immigrant nanny, piecing together a new life in New York City while caring for the child of an Upper East Side family, working to bring her own child to America.
“We’re proud to have writer-director Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny as part of our slate for Amazon. It’s a gem of a horror film that combines impressive filmmaking and powerful storytelling, and is worthy of the Grand Jury Prize it was awarded at Sundance,” said Jason Blum. Added Julie Rapaport, head of movies at Amazon: “From the exceptional performances to its strong visual language, we can’t wait to share Nanny with our global audience and to continue our longstanding collaboration with Blumhouse.”
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Blumhouse and Amazon have a partnership under which the horror house’s television arm produces feature anthology series Welcome to the Blumhouse for the streaming service.
Nanny’s deal is indicative of several trends that have come out of Sundance in the past few years, which includes dealmaking extending longer past the festival’s close. In the interim, Jusu set up her sophomore effort with Universal and Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw.
The Nanny deal also marks the continued dominance of streamers at the 2022 fest. Even with Netflix and Amazon being less of a buying presence than years past, the fest’s largest sales are continuing to go to streamers or have a streaming component. Searchlight acquired Fresh and Leo Grande for Hulu, HBO Max landed Am I OK?, and Apple made the biggest buy of the fest with Cha Cha Real Smooth.
Nikkia Moulterie and Daniela Taplin Lundberg of Stay Gold Features produced Nanny, with Maria Zuckerman of Topic Studios and Grace Lay and Sumalee Montano of LinLay Productions executive producing. The deal was negotiated by CAA Media Finance on behalf of the filmmakers.
