‘Zero Contact’ With Anthony Hopkins Acquired By Lionsgate’s Grindstone; Enderby Entertainment Making Sequels – And History – In Antarctica
14.01.2022 - 19:43
/ deadline.com
EXCLUSIVE: Enderby Entertainment’s Zero Contact, a novel solution to the conundrum of making films during the pandemic, has been acquired in the U.S. by Lionsgate’s Grindstone Entertainment.
The film, which features Hopkins playing a tech tycoon communicating by Zoom with characters shot in 17 global locations, will be released in May. Meanwhile, two sequels are in the works. Six shooting days in December made history, per the producers, who say theirs is the first scripted feature ever to film in Antarctica. (Check out the behind-the-scenes video above for some pretty amazing visuals.)
Deadline reported last fall that the original film pursued an emerging release format: a non-fungible token, or NFT. The Lionsgate release will follow several “drops” on NFT platform Vuele over the past few months.
Grindstone CEO Barry Brooker calls Zero Contact “a mysterious, twisty thriller that will keep audiences guessing until the very end.” It also features a “powerhouse performance by Anthony Hopkins,” he added. Hopkins is coming off a Best Actor Oscar win last year for The Father.
In an interview, Zero Contact producer and director Rick Dugdale (who co-founded Enderby with Daniel Petrie Jr.) said the unusual release pattern is something film distributors are looking at closely in today’s marketplace.
“It’s a totally different audience,” between NFT buyers and conventional movie consumers, Dugdale said. “Lionsgate and Grindstone and everyone we’re working with all look at the NFT as a marketing tool.”
Grindstone, a subsidiary of Lionsgate for more than a decade, teams with its parent company to release more than 30 films a year that it either acquires or produces (sometimes both). Past titles have included Vanquish with Morgan Freeman