“The Surrogate” has been picked up at the Sundance Festival by Fox Searchlight for $6 million, according to the TheWrap. The U.S. narrative competition drama drew offers shortly after its well-received world premiere Monday afternoon at the Eccles Theatre.
The fact-based film stars Helen Hunt as the professional sex surrogate and John Hawkes, as Mark O’Brien, a poet/journalist who spent much of his life confined to an iron lung. O’brien is a 38 year old polio victim who hires a sex surrogate to lose his virginity. William H. Macy plays Father Brendan, a priest who counsels O’Brien.
Fox Searchlight’s acquisition of the Ben Lewin directed film was the largest purchase of the Sundance Film Festival so far. The independent studio is also in final negotiations to buy “Beasts of the Southern Wild”, another popular film at Sundance.
