Netflix has been used to writing large cheques recently, but while their latest acquisition isn’t going to make much of a dent in their spending of billions on original content, it’s no less interesting. From Toronto International Film Festival, they’ve acquired Andrew Niccol‘s film, Anon, for $4 million.
Directed by Niccol – who directed Gattaca, wrote The Truman Show and is set to finally help adapt the long gestating Gemini Man with Will Smith – the film stars Amanda Seyfried, Clive Owen and Sonya Walger.
The film is set in the near future where there is no privacy or anonymity, with private memories being recorded and crime ceasing to exist. In trying to solve a series of murders, Sal Friedland (Owen) stumbles onto a young woman (Seyfried) who has managed to disappear from the system, and realises that there’s darkness on the underbelly of this new world.
Niccol has often excelled at these sort of dystopian films, having also directed the similar In Time in 2011, which also starred Seyfried. With Netflix still looking to find consistency with their Original Films, picking up potentially solid genre fair like Anon for their library is a good step forward.
Anon isn’t the only acquisition Netflix made at TIFF, as they also picked up Replica, starring Keanu Reeves, also for $4 million, alongside Kodachrome, starring Ed Harris and Jason Sudeikis, and Jim And Andy: The Great Beyond, which is a documentary about Jim Carrey‘s transformation into legendary comic Andy Kaufman for the 1999 film Man On The Moon.
Netflix did narrowly miss out on the Tonya Harding biopic I, Tonya, which was a hot property and acquired by 30West and Neon, but they’ll be happy enough with the deals they’ve already made as the festival rolls on.
#Peace.Love.Anon
