While Anchor Bay Nab Starry Channing Tatum-Led Ensemble Drama ‘Ten Year’
For a while, we were starting to wonder if we’d dreamed the Will Ferrell comedy “Casa De Mi Padre.” On almost no one’s radar before the start of this year, a surprise trailer for the project, a Spanish-language film co-starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, debuted back in the spring, but nothing’s been heard from the film since, and we had to double check our archives to make sure it was a real thing, and not something that we’d imagined after a night with too many telenovelas and too much meth.
But fortunately, it is a real thing, and we’re only a few months from seeing it, as Deadline report that Pantelion Films, the Hispanic/Latino label of Lionsgate Films, have acquired the NALA Films/Gary Sanchez co-production, and will put it into wide release on March 16, 2012. Debut director Matt Piedmont commented, “Will, Andrew and I are excited to have Pantelion distribute the movie — especially since our collective knowledge of the Spanish language amounts to what we learned during a half-hour Learning Annex class taken the night before production of the film began. We loved collaborating with NALA to make this movie and now can’t wait to have it released. Pantelion and NALA are the perfect team to get it out there.” Check out the official synopsis and, if you missed it, that trailer, after the jump.
“Armando Alvarez (Will Ferrell) has lived and worked on his father’s ranch in Mexico his entire life. As the ranch encounters financial difficulties, Armando’s younger brother Raul (Diego Luna) shows up with his new fiancée, Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez). It seems that Raul’s success as an international businessman means the ranch’s troubles are over as he pledges to settle all debts his father has incurred. But when Armando falls for Sonia, and Raul’s business dealings turn out to be less than legit, all hell breaks loose as they find themselves in a war with Mexico’s most feared drug lord, the mighty Onza (Gael Garcia Bernal).”
Aside from Ferrell, Luna, Bernal and “The Last Stand” star Rodriguez, the cast also includes Efren Ramirez (“Napoleon Dynamite“) and Ron Fucking Swanson, aka “Parks and Recreation” star Nick Offerman, and the title song will be performed by Christina Aguilera, of all people. The whole thing’s a pretty bold gamble, and we’re not sure that opening the film head-to-head with “21 Jump Street” is necessarily the best idea, but it’s certainly livened up the first few months of next year.
In other distribution news, Deadline also report that Anchor Bay have acquired the rights to “Ten Year,” the TIFF selection that stars Channing Tatum, Jenna Dewan, Anthony Mackie, Rosario Dawson, Brian Geraghty, Lynn Collins, Oscar Isaac, Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, Ari Graynor, Ron Livingston, Justin Long, Kate Mara, Max Minghella and Scott Porter as high-school pals who are pulled back together for their decade-on reunion. Written and directed by Jamie Linden (who penned the scripts for “We Are Marshall” and “Dear John“), the film premiered at Toronto to respectful, if not wildly enthusiastic, reviews — read ours here — so Anchor Bay seem to be the right home for it. They’ll put it into platform release sometime next spring.
