Sony Classics Takes Andy Garcia's Cannes Noir 'Diamond'
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- Sony Pictures Classics acquired a majority of global rights to the Cannes-premiering crime drama 'Diamond,' with France, Germany, Italy, and CIS territories excluded from the deal negotiated with CAA Media Finance.
- Andy Garcia wrote, directed, produced, and stars as LAPD-outsmarting private investigator Joe Diamond, and co-composed the original score with longtime Grammy and Latin Grammy-winning collaborator Arturo Sandoval.
- Garcia said the story 'haunted' him for close to 20 years, describing the project as a deeply personal independent film that finally came together with an ensemble cast including Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Brendan Fraser, Vicki Krieps, Demián Bichir, Danny Huston, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Rosemarie DeWitt, Robert Patrick, Rachel Ticotin, and Yul Vazquez.
- Black Cap Pictures / Nexis Entertainment financed the CineSon production, with producers Jai Stefan (Shrink Media), Frank Mancuso Jr. (FGM Entertainment), and Paul Soriano (Black Cap Pictures / TEN17P); The Veterans is overseeing international rights.
- 'Diamond' currently holds an 82% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was positioned by Sony Pictures Classics as 'one of those great Phillip Marlowe private eye crime mysteries of the past, full of surprises.'
Why it matters: Sony Pictures Classics is betting on a multi-hyphenate auteur project with proven festival pedigree (Cannes world premiere) and solid early critical reception (82% on Rotten Tomatoes) for its specialty slate, while Andy Garcia's rare writer-director-producer-star-composer credit on a 20-year labor of love is exactly the prestige indie playbook the distributor was built on.
