Sony Pictures Classics has picked up A Winter’s Journey, an upcoming animated-live action film from British director Alex Helfrecht (The White King).
SPC pre-bought the movie for North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Scandinavia, Australia/New Zealand, Turkey, India, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Japan and Thailand, as well as taking worldwide airline rights.
An adaptation of Winterreise, Franz Schubert’s classical song cycle, A Winter’s Journey is set in Bavaria in 1812 and follows the wanderings of a lovelorn poet who undertakes a life-or-death hike across mountains, ice and snow. The film will start principle photography in Poland in June with a cast including John Malkovich, Jason Isaacs, Polish actor Marcin Czarnik (Son of Saul), Germany’s Martina Gedeck (The Lives of Others) and Olafur Darri Olafsson (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald). Baritone Andrè Schuen and pianist Daniel Heide will perform the soundtrack, which will be released by Deutsche Grammophon.
A Winter’s Journey will blend life action with CGI and painted animation from the team behind the Oscar-nominated Loving Vincent (2017). The world of the film will be the first to be built using PlayStation’s Dreams technology, developed by PlayStation Studios’ multiple-BAFTA-winning games studio Media Molecule.
Jörg Tittel and Philip Munger at London-based Oiffy are producing, together with Sean Bobbitt and Hugh Welchman through their Poland-based BreakThru Films, Reinhard Brundig at German group Pandora Film, Benoit Roland’s Wrong Men North in Belgium, Raphaël Berdugo and Alexis Perrin in France and Richard Mansell. Sebastien Barrillier and Yann Duboux are executive producers.
The Sony deal was negotiated with Paris-based mk2 Films, who are handling international sales.
