Johnnie To’s Exiled Finds A Home …

Magnolia Pictures announced today the acquisition of all English-language rights to Hong Kong director Johnny To’s EXILED from Media Asia.  The film is a hotly anticipated, highly stylized ensemble action thriller set in the Hong Kong Underworld modeled after To’s earlier THE MISSION.  The deal was completed just after the North American premiere of the film at the Toronto Film Festival, right on the heels of buzz garnered from its World Premiere days ago at the Venice Film Festival.

“A lot of people thinking that the Hong Kong gangster film ran its course in the nineties are going to be pleasantly surprised by the freshness and innovation of EXILED,” said Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles.  “To has really created a masterwork of style and substance which serves as a fantastic summation of the genre.” Magnolia will release the film in the United States in 2007.

“We’re very impressed by Magnolia’s passion for the film and their commitments in their release plan.  For some time our distribution team has been looking for the right project to work with Magnolia and I am sure this is a good start for a mutually beneficial cooperation,” said John Chong, CEO of Media Asia Entertainment Group.

The company’s Head of Acquisitions Tom Quinn, Manager of Acquisitions Ben Stambler, and Head of Business Affairs Jason Janego negotiated the deal with Senior Manager (Production & Distribution) Fred Tsui and Head of Distribution & Sales Jeffrey Chan of Media Asia.  Rights to the film were jointly acquired with Optimum Releasing, who will obtain the UK, and Madman Entertainment securing Australia/New Zealand.  Magnolia, Optimum, and Madman are the same team responsible for bringing Bong Joon-ho’s Korean box-office record-breaking THE HOST to English language audiences.  THE HOST is slated for release in the US in early 2007.

Media Asia Entertainment Group is one of Asia’s largest and most successful Chinese language film studios. Since its establishment in 1994, the Group has produced or co-financed over 50 Chinese language films. These include the US$20M production, The Banquet (starring Ziyi Zhang and Daniel Wu) which is about to come out in the Asian cinemas, box-office successes such as Initial D (2005), Wait ‘Til You’re Older (2005), A World Without Thieves (2004), Magic Kitchen (2004), and the Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002-2003) which is remade into the Martin Scorsese film, The Departed. The Group has also won 111 awards and been nominated more than 250 times at international film awards and at film festivals such as the Berlin International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, the Venice Biennale, the Tokyo International Film Festival, the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and the Hong Kong Film Awards.

Magnolia Pictures, an independent distributor, recently released Nicolas Winding Refn’s PUSHER TRILOGY, the Luc Besson produced DISTRICT B13, Roger Donaldson’s THE WORLD’S FASTEST INDIAN with Anthony Hopkins, Alex Gibney’s Academy Award-nominated documentary ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM, and also mounted the successful multi-platform release of Steven Soderbergh’s BUBBLE. Upcoming films include JESUS CAMP, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Bong Joon-ho’s THE HOST, and Christopher Smith’s SEVERANCE.  Magnolia Pictures is part of a vertically-integrated group of media properties co-owned by Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban that also includes the Landmark Theatres chain, production companies HDNet Films and 2929 Productions, and high-definition cable networks HDNet and HDNet Movies.