The Last 5 Years, the movie version of the cult musical starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan, has inked a number of foreign distribution deals ahead of its Toronto Film Festival world premiere, including to the U.K. and a raft of Asian markets, including China.
The film has been sold to Icon Film Distribution in the U.K., to Portugal, the Baltic regions in Eastern Europe, Australia/New Zealand, South Africa and the following countries in Asia: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.
But the movie, directed by P.S. I Love You’s Richard LaGravenese, still doesn’t have a U.S. distribution deal.
The film is based on the cult off-Broadway musical about the demise of a marriage from the perspective of both the successful writer husband (Jordan) and his struggling actress wife (Kendrick). The musical was written by Jason Robert Brown, with LaGravenese adapting the stage production for the big screen.
CAA is handling U.S. sales for The Last 5 Years. The Exchange is handling international sales.
At a distributors’ screening of The Last 5 Years in February, Kendrick told The Hollywood Reporter that the intimate film’s honest portrayal of relationships is relatable.
“Everybody that I’ve met who’s familiar with the material or who has seen it even once feels like they see pieces of themselves and past relationships that they had,” the actress told THR. “I think Jason does such a terrific job about being honest about ups and downs of relationships. And about being honest about the fact that sometimes it’s complicated, and it might not be anybody’s fault, or it might be somebody’s fault, but relationships are complicated, and people relate to that.”
Brown also talked about how the film differs from the play.
“[The film is] a very different experience than the show is in a lot of ways, even though there’s really almost no alteration from the script of the play,” he explained. “It’s a much more immersive experience in a lot of ways. It’s a very intense thing, to be pulled in that closely to the actors. … The show in a way is more of a musical experience — it’s about watching a bunch of things get pieced together on a musical level, and the film is a much more intense bit of storytelling.”
