SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO ASK… THE MESSENGER GETS A DISTRIBUTION DEAL
Proving that sometimes you just have to a) show up and b) ask, writer/director Oren Moverman sent the below email detailing how it came to be that Oscilloscope picked up distribution rights to his Sundance-premiering film, The Messenger. Six months after the film screened in Park City, a distribution deal emerged when Moverman happened to attend an IFP reception held at Deluxe Laboratories in New York to welcome Adam Yauch to its Board of Directors.
Around 7.45 that night I met Adam and David Fenkel of Oscilloscope for the first time. I had wine.
They told me they liked The Messenger, a film I directed a few months ago.
They said they hoped to release a film like The Messenger one day.
I said, well maybe that day has come.
My friend Ira Sachs smiled.
Adam and David thought we surely already had a distributor.
They were wrong.
I told them to give it a shot.
On July 11th we closed the deal with Oscilloscope to distribute The Messenger this November.
I couldn’t be happier.
My daughter and I were experimenting with veganism that month.
I left hungry and tipsy.
A very good idea, this reception.
Thanks IFP, Deluxe, and Ira. — Oren Moverman
