If, like our Man In LA (hello!) you’re a Stateside-based reader of the mag and the site, have been spending the last few weeks seething with barely-contained envy while people got to see Joe Cornish’s reportedly superb directorial debut Attack The Block in the UK and at the SXSW Film Fest, and had been wondering if you’d get your chance, worry no more: Sony’s screen Gems division has picked up the US rights to the film.
For the two of you who’ve never heard of the film, Block finds a gang of inner-city kids interrupted in their usual pastime of robbing people and running rampant by the arrival of some particularly nasty extraterrestrials. And after they kill the first creature, the rest launch an all-out war on their estate.
There had been some concerns in the Stateside press about the street lingo and accents in the film (not shocking when some TV shows on BBC America arrive with subtitles) putting off distributors, but Screen Gems stepped up.
“Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions President Steve Bersch screened this film for me and I fell completely in love with it,” says Gems boss Clint Culpepper in a release picked up by the Heat Vision Blog. “The film is, at once, charming, scary, funny, hip, clever and completely hits its mark. I hope this is the beginning of a long relationship with these incredibly talented filmmakers.”
While there’s no set release date yet, it’s hoped that the movie will hit American shores not too long after the May 11 UK launch.