As is often the case for budding indie films, outside of those keeping track of the atypical monster movie from the outset, there wasn’t buzz surrounding Nacho Vigalondo’s Colossal going into Toronto International Film Festival. Oh how that changed – and fast.
Buoyed by stellar reviews, ours included, the Anne Hathaway-fronted picture was at the center of a frenzied bidding war coming out of the annual film fest, when Deadline confirmed that an “unspecified Chinese-based media company” had landed international rights after tabling a seven-figure deal. That puts Vigalondo’s feature on course for a 2017 theatrical release, and the company reportedly has big distribution plans in place, even establishing a U.S. studio with Colossal being the marquee launch title.
No word yet on exactly when Nacho Vigalondo’s creature feature will be stomping into theaters across the globe, but Collider did quiz the film’s leading stars, Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis, about how they came attached to such an unusual project, along with the small matter of imagining a giant monster rampaging around Seoul, South Korea.
At the heart of the story, though, is Hathaway’s Gloria, a New York woman on a downward spiral who uproots for South East Asia after losing her job and boyfriend (Dan Stevens) within the space of a few days. To make matters worse, it appears her fractured emotional state is somehow projected onto that aforementioned kaiju, paving the way for a very peculiar, intimate setup.
I gotta say, one of the things I love about this movie so much, that I don’t always see in movies, Gloria feels the weight of her actions. She’s a pretty isolated drunk when you meet her. And obviously because of the movie’s more fantastical elements, we don’t have this represented in her life, but her shadow self blowing up in her face the way it does and disrupting people’s lives in the way it does, it gets her through therapy like that. The stakes become so high for her.
Colossal is, at the time of writing, still in search of a US release date. Things are looking good, though, what with that significant Chinese investment, so stay tuned for more.