Columbia Pictures and parent company Sony Pictures Entertainment have optioned the English language rights to remake “Rust and Bone” director Jacques Audiard’s much-celebrated 2009 French crime thriller “A Prophet.”
Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 2010 and winner of the 2009 Grand Prix at Cannes — along with nine Cesar Awards — “A Prophet” stars Tahar Rahim (at Cannes last month for Asghar Farhadi’s “The Past”) as a prison inmate who rises to power after falling under the spell of the Corsican mafia. The film was critically lauded stateside and abroad for its unflinching depiction of European crime hierarchies. It was an arthouse hit for Sony Pictures Classics in the US in 2010, grossing nearly $3 million.
Be prepared for a mainstream Hollywood remake, because the English-language version of this super-gritty piece of cinema realism will be produced by producers Neal H. Moritz and Toby Jaffe through Moritz’s Original Film, whose filmography includes this year’s “Fast and Furious 6” and “Jack the Giant Slayer.”
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