Shout! Studios has acquired all rights to the disaster action movie Fire for the territory of North America.
"Fire is a high-octane action thriller with stunning production value and heroic characters. Emotional and visual, this is man vs. nature writ large," stated Jordan Fields, Vice President of Acquisitions at Shout! Studios
Fire was released in Russia on 24 December 2020 and has already grossed more than 10 million dollars at the Russian box office.
International sales are being managed by the film production and distribution company Central Partnership (part of Gazprom-Media Holding). Besides North America, director Aleksey Nuzhny's blockbuster has already been sold in Australia and New Zealand (Umbrella Entertainment), Germany and German-speaking Europe (Capelight Pictures), Spain (Mediaset), Latin America (BF Distribution), Japan (Culture Entertainment), South Korea (BoXoo Entertainment) and Taiwan (MovieCloud). The film will be released in North America in summer 2021.
Vadim Vereschagin, CEO of Central Partnership: "Every year, forest fires take a terrible toll in damage to the environment and human lives lost. This affects us all, no matter where we live. Viewers across the world will recognize Fire's characters, because there are people like them everywhere. They're not Marvel superheroes: they're the guy next door, the sort of person you might meet on the way to work, who every day goes willingly off to battle against this terrifying force of nature. The problem of forest fires is just as acute in North America as it is in Russia, and we are delighted at buyers' interest in the film, belief in its potential, and appreciation of its scale and quality. This is particularly important for us as distributors now, during the pandemic and ongoing crisis in the cinema business. Today as ever, our focus is on strengthening the position of Russian film on the international stage".
Fire is the work of Nikita Mikhalkov's Studio TriTe, the television channel Russia 1, and Central Partnership. The film was shot in 2019, in what was in many ways an operation of unprecedented scale and complexity: for instance, the crew filmed genuine forest fires in Krasnoyarsk Territory. However, not a single living tree was harmed in the making of the film: the team bought trees that had already been cut down and used them to construct an extensive forest set.
The film's actors also showed their commitment, performing dangerous stunts without stunt doubles and acting while surrounded by genuine, blazing fire.
The team benefited from advice from members of the emergency services and Forest Protection Service, which also provided some incredible aircraft for the film: Mi-8 helicopters, Il-62 and An-26 planes, and Be-200 amphibians. The scene showing a forest fire being extinguished using a Be-200 amphibian was captured by six cameras at once.
Studio TriTe and Russia 1's previous box-office hit, the blockbuster Three Seconds, was the highest-grossing Russian film ever in China.
Audiences in the USA and Canada will have the chance to form their own opinion of this tale of heroism in the Fire and Rescue Service in summer 2021.
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FIRE
Russia, 2020
Genre: Action/ Disaster
Production: Three T Studio, TV-channel Russia-1, Central Partnership with the support of FOND KINO
Director: Alexey Nuzhny
Screenplay by: Nikolay Kulikov, Alexey Nuzhny, Konstantin Meyer
DOP: Mikhail Milashin
Set designer: Sergey Agin
Music: Kirill Borodulev
Cast: Konstantin Khabenskiy, Andrey Smolyakov, Irina Gorbacheva, Victor Dobronravov, Ivan Yankovskiy, Roman Kurtsyn, Yuriy Kuznetsov, Tikhon Zhiznevskiy, Anton Bogdanov
Synopsis
A heroic story about firefighters and rescuers. What we call an act of bravery is just a usual routine for them, if only one can get used to mortal danger and extreme risk. When people in distress seem to have nobody who may help them, rescuers come to fight against merciless forces of nature.