Freestyle Releasing has bought Alycia Debnam-Carey’s horror-thriller “Friend Request” for a fourth-quarter release in North America, according to Variety.
Debnam-Carey portrays a college student who faces grave consequences when she unfriends on social media a mysterious female loner from her high school. That leads to her fighting a demonic presence.
“Friend Request” also stars Brit Morgan, William Moseley, and Connor Paolo, and was directed by Simon Verhoeven, from a screenplay by Verhoeven, Matthew Ballen, and Philip Koch. The film is produced by German-based producers Quirin Berg and Max Wiedemann of Wiedemann & Berg Film.
Debnam-Carey stars in AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead” and as Commander Lexa in The CW series “The 100.”
It’s the first acquisition for Freestyle since it was acquired by Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios in October.Freestyle said the release willmarks the first time it will extend its services beyond its traditional “service only” theatrical distribution business model.
Freestyle, founded in 2003, specialized in offering service deals under which producers agree to pay an upfront fee and a percentage of the boxoffice in exchange for Freestyle releasing the film into theaters. Producers retained the rights to their films under such deals.
The deal was negotiated by Freestyle’s Chris Charalambous and WME Global on behalf of Berg and Wiedemann.
International theatrical distribution is being handled by The Exchange, which recently announced territories sold in Australia/New Zealand, France, Italy, Eastern Europe, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Latin America, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Israel. Warner Bros. is handling theatrical distribution in the UK and Germany.
