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    Fox Searchlight Pictures Acquires Dark Comedy "Choke"

    Thursday, 01/24/2008

    FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES ACQUIRES
    DARK COMEDY “CHOKE”

    Specialty Arm Acquires Worldwide Rights

    PARK CITY, UT January 22, 2008 – Fox Searchlight Pictures President Peter Rice today announced that the company has acquired U.S. and most worldwide rights to the dark comedy CHOKE, which had its world premiere last night in the Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Adapted and directed by Clark Gregg, CHOKE stars Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Brad William Henke and Kelly Macdonald. Gregg also has a supporting role. The film was produced by Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson of Contrafilm and Johnathan Dorfman and Temple Fennell of ATO Pictures. Gary Ventimiglia, Mary Vernieu, Mike S. Ryan and Derrick Tseng served as executive producers. The film is adapted from the best-selling, critically acclaimed novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The film is scheduled to be released in 2008.

    Said Fox Searchlight Pictures President Peter Rice, “Writer-director Clark Gregg’s wickedly funny and wildly original feature film debut brings a fresh filmmaking voice to the big screen with an incredibly engaging and provocative story.”

    Added Clark Gregg, “I’ve watched the bold creative way Searchlight has handled films which take the kind of risks that we've tried to take with CHOKE, so when their entire creative team sat with me right after the screening and spoke so incisively about the film, it was a very easy decision."

    Actor-turned-director Clark Gregg shows he is as adept behind the camera as he is in front of it with CHOKE, a wickedly colorful dark comedy about mothers and sons, sexual compulsion, and the sordid underbelly of Colonial theme parks.

    Victor Mancini (Rockwell), a sex-addicted med-school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida (Huston), in an expensive private medical hospital by working days as a historical reenactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park. At night Victor runs a scam by deliberately choking in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who “save” him. When, in a rare lucid movement, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father’s identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend, Denny (Henke) and his mother’s beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall (Macdonald), to solve the mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever.

    The deal was brokered on Fox Searchlight's side by Executive Vice President of Worldwide Acquisitions Tony Safford and Executive Vice President of Business Affairs Joey DeMarco. The film was represented by Rich Klubeck of UTA with legal counsel provided by Andrew Hurwitz and Alan Sacks of Schreck, Rose, Dapello, Adams and Hurwitz. Clark Gregg is represented by Blair Belcher of UTA.

    Fox Searchlight Pictures is a specialty film company that both produces and acquires motion pictures. It has its own marketing and distribution operations, and its films are distributed internationally by Twentieth Century Fox. Fox Searchlight Pictures is a unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment, a unit of Fox Entertainment Group.

    For more information contact:
    Michelle Hooper, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 310-369-1570