Star-studded film Winged Creatures gets release partner

Peace Arch Entertainment Group and Sony Pictures Worldwide announced that Sony has acquired U.S. distribution rights to the feature film Winged Creatures from Peace Arch.

Winged Creatures stars six of today’s most celebrated actors, 2007 Academy Award-winner Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland, Platoon), 2007 Academy Award-winner Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) and 2007 Academy Award-nominee Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children, Bad News Bears) star in the ensemble drama alongside Screen Actors Guild Award-nominee Guy Pearce (Memento, LA Confidential), Screen Actors Guild Award-nominee Kate Beckinsale (The Aviator, Pearl Harbor), and Screen Actors Guild Award-nominee Dakota Fanning (War of The Worlds, I Am Sam).

The film is directed by Australian Rowan Woods (Little Fish, The Boys), from a screenplay by Roy Freirich. Robert Salerno (21 Grams, Chapter 27, Delirious) is producing the film, which recently completed principal photography in Los Angeles.

The deal was negotiated by Peace Arch President John Flock and Lara Thompson, SVP of Acquisitions and Production for Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group and Scott Shooman, Executive Director of Acquisitions and Production for SPWAG.

Peace Arch Entertainment Group president John Flock said, “Winged Creatures is an extraordinarily moving work that exemplifies the type of high-quality independent feature that Peace Arch is now supplying. Sony has a successful track record with character-driven dramatic features, and they are an ideal distribution partner for us in features as well as international television, proven by their winning campaign on our series The Tudors”.

In Winged Creatures, a group of strangers form a unique relationship with each other after surviving a senseless multiple murder at a Los Angeles diner. The survivors are then left to divine their own path to understanding their personal mortality and their connection to society. They all (Kate Beckinsale, Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce, Forest Whitaker) find that the meanings of their lives have changed. No matter how much their families and friends (Jennifer Hudson, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Embeth Davidtz) attempt to understand, these individuals must follow their own paths to recovery seeking to regain trust in a world that now seems chaotic. A story of tragedy and hope for our times, Winged Creatures is a powerful ensemble drama that explores the notion that our lives are fleeting, like birds in flight, like ‘winged creatures’.

The supporting cast includes Embeth Davidtz (Schindler’s List, Army of Darkness, Junebug), Jeanne Tripplehorn (Basic Instinct, The Firm, Sliding Doors), Josh Hutcherson (Bridge To Terabithia, Polar Express, American Splendor), Robin Weigert (The Good German, Deadwood, Angels In America), and Troy Garity (Soldier’s Girl, Bandit, Barbershop).

Winged Creatures is currently scheduled to be in theaters sometime in 2008.

In addition to Peace Arch Entertainment’s expanding library of motion pictures and long-form television programming, the company’s current line-up of feature films includes the romantic comedy The Deal starring William H. Macy, Meg Ryan, LL Cool J and Elliott Gould, now in post-production, the romantic comedy Watching The Detectives starring Cillian Murphy and Lucy Liu which recently world premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and screening at Cannes, two of the favorites at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival: the drama Chapter 27 starring Jared Leto and Lindsay Lohan, also screening at Cannes, and Delirious, a comedy starring Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt, Alison Lohman, Gina Gershon and Elvis Costello.

Peace Arch also co-produced and is the worldwide distributor of the ten-hour event television series The Tudors starring Golden Globe Award-winning Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Match Point), Henry Czerny (Mission Impossible) and Golden Globe Award-nominated Sam Neill (Jurassic Park), which was recently renewed for a second season following record-setting ratings for Showtime Networks in the United States.