NEWMARKET & ICON PACT
Variety reports today: “Following Newmarket‘s enormously successful release of Icon‘s The Passion of the Christ, the two companies have created an informal alliance to buy movies together for distribution in North America, the U.K. and Australia.”
The pact, which was announced at Cannes, “is intended to give Newmarket greater clout to acquire U.S. rights in the face of competition from the specialized arms of the major studios, which often bid for all English-language territories.”
“The idea of cooperating,” writes Adam Dawtrey in Variety, “grew out of the fact that Newmarket and Icon separately bought U.S. and Australian rights to the Charlize Theron pic Monster.”
