After several days of making a big splash at Toronto Film Festival it looks like comedian Chris Rock made the most waves as he made the biggest deal of the festival by signing over his film Top Five to Paramount. In the film Rock stars and also directs.
The highlight of the festival had to be the nature of how this developed: Rock brings his independent film to the festival that no one had an eye on, and eventually had all of the major studios and a line of distributors bidding for the film until Brad Grey’s studio took it off the table by paying $12.5 million for it. Now that that’s completed, and now that Paramount has swooped in, the studio has just set a December 5 limited release date with plans to open it wide December 12.
As reported, the film’s cast includes Rosario Dawson, J.B.Smoove, Gabrielle Union, Tracy Morgan, Cedric The Entertainer, Kevin Hart, Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler, Whoopi Goldberg and Jay Pharoah in a movie about a stand up comic-turned-movie star. Hip hop stars Jay-Z and Kanye West are on board as producers with Scott Rudin and Barry Diller.
So far, many who have seen the film give it high accolades and many national film critics say this is Rock’s best film to date. Here’s hoping that the audience agrees.
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