Fox Searchlight Buys Aronofsky's Black Swan

Just Sunday night Peter reported a couple of great cast additions to Black Swan, the next film from Darren Aronofsky. In the same article he noted that Fox Searchlight was reportedly close to picking up the project. Now the deal is done and the studio is indeed on board.

Reuters updates a THR report that parroted Peter's info without crediting him. The distribution deal isn't any big surprise, as Fox Searchlight has been the most likely distro for the film since it was announced as having come back to life a few months ago. (It was put into turnaround by Universal a couple years back.) They released The Wrestler, and I would have been quite surprised to hear that Searchlight had passed on this. It was just a matter of time. Still, knowing that the film is sorted for distribution is a good thing. Now if Aronofsky could just get to shootin'. We've heard from the beginning that the film would shoot this fall in NYC, and Reuters is saying it will go 'before the end of the year'.

(Don't take the delay as a bad sign. Black Swan was previously financed by Overnight Films, the same company that financed Machete. But there's been a little bit of turmoil within that company, and while Overnight's Rick Schwartz is still working on Aronofsky's film, the project will now be co-financed by Fox Searchlight and Cross Creek Pictures. Hopefully with that locked down, the film can set a schedule.)

To recap: Black Swan stars Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Winona Ryder, Vincent Cassel and Barbara Hershey. Portman is Nina, a veteran ballerina who finds herself locked in to a competitive showdown with a rival dancer named Lilly (Kunis) "with the stakes and twists increasing as the dancers approach a big performance." Mark Heyman, co-producer of The Wrestler, has done a rewrite of the original script by John McLaughlin.