"Tree of Life" finds distributor, release moved back to 2009!!!

Source: Screendaily

Leading Spanish outfit TriPictures has taken the distribution rights for Spain to Terrence Malick’s Tree Of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, and Gary Winnick’s Letters To Juliet.

The titles were sold by Summit Entertainment in Cannes.

Malick’s Tree Of Life follows a man who struggles to come to terms with a childhood torn apart by sickness, suffering and death. Bill Pohlad at River Road Entertainment and Pitt and Dede Gardner are co-producers on the film which is due for release in the US later this year.

Summit previously sealed distribution deals for Malick’s film at Cannes to EuropaCorp in France, Icon (UK and Australia), TeleMuenchen Group (Germany), Svensk (Scandinavia), O1 (Italy) and Belga (Benelux).

Meanwhile, Letters To Juliet stars Amanda Seyfried as an American girl who discovers the legend of “letters to Juliet” on a trip to Verona. She discovers a letter written in 1958 which has never been picked up and decides to find the lovers in question.

UK writer Tim Sullivan wrote the screenplay from an original draft by Jose Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries). Ellen Barkin at Applehead Productions is co-producing with Mark Canton.

The release dates in Spain for both films are yet to be confirmed.

"Tree of Life" gets pushed to 2010 (or later.....), and other related news...

The Playlist is reporting about having spoken to a source in Austin during SXSW about Terrence Malick's Tree of Life undergoing additional shooting and that the film "is about a year away from completion and maybe a year and half away total." Which means, if this turns out to be valid information, that we're looking at a mid-2010 release.

Malick's parallel IMAX project is said to be titled Voyage of Time. An anonymous Awards Daily commenter who claimed to be posting from Malick's home town of Austin but who could in fact be the great Ahmed Khan posting from Kabul or Mumbai wrote earlier this month that Time will run in the vicinity of 45 minutes, that some Time footage may be used for Tree of Life, and that it'll be released simultaneously with Tree of Life.

Clearly, Malick has an attachment to secrecy. He seems to live for it almost. To be able to work within such an utterly secret vacuum that no one is able to learn any substantive-sounding information is perhaps (who knows?) the bottom-line electric lightning-bolt element in Terrence Malick's life and head. Secrecy! Such that no one seems to have stopped to consider the absolute lunacy of attempting to blend a story about an anxious 20th Century man (Sean Penn) and recollections of his distant father (Brad Pitt) with prehistoric pre-time elements, including a prehistoric creature sleeping in a sea of magma. Good God!

Even more info about "Tree of Life" (and beyond)

if any of this is remotely true...just...wow. This has "mind-blowing experience" written all over it.

Source: aintitcoolnews.com

Personally, I hope he's involved with the NASA-shot sequences that will allegedly be included in the IMAX movie.

And when I say "IMAX movie", I mean a whole second movie. That's right, we'll be getting two new Malick movies in the next year or so: the first is THE TREE OF LIFE (which one source tells me is "massive"); the other will be an "IMAX-only" feature depicting the birth and death of the universe. It's important to note that these films are not narratively connected; to the best of my knowledge, they're thematically complementary pieces. Hopefully, I'll be able to elaborate on this by the end of the week (though I'd kinda like to stay a little vague on the details if only to preserve the air of mystery that's surrounding this production).

But Douglas Trumbull, the visual f/x pioneer who collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on 2001 and Steven Spielberg on CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, will be receiving his first feature credit since Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER. On a Terrence Malick film. It don't get any cooler than that.

Thanks to "Heywood Floyd" and "John Galt" for getting in touch.

New (and very mysterious) information about Terrence Malick's "Tree of Life" (2009?)

So far, the only information I'd seen made the film look as though it was just a sprawling family saga covering 2 or 3 generations of one family. Apparently, there's something much more epic (and visually brilliant) in the works. My first Malick experience wasn't a good one (The New World), but he does have a good visual eye, so I can't wait to see how these images (if they're "real") look when they're done.

Source: unknown

In one version of the screenplay, the story opened with “a sleeping god, underwater, dreaming of the origins of the universe, starting with the big bang and moving forward, as fluorescent fish swam into the deity’s nostrils and out again.” Malick supposedly wanted to create something that has never been seen before, and dispatched cameramen all over the world. They shot micro jellyfish on the Great Barrier Reef volcanic explosions on Mount Edna, and ice shelves breaking off in Antarctica. special effects consultant Richard Taylor describes sections of the script as “pages of poetry, with no dialogue, glorious visual descriptions.


We trace the evolution of an eleven-year-old boy in the Midwest, Jack, one of three brothers. At first all seems marvelous to the child. He sees as his mother does, with the eyes of his soul. She represents the way of love and mercy, where the father tries to teach his son the world’s way, of putting oneself first. Each parent contends for his allegiance, and Jack must reconcile their claims. The picture darkens as he has his first glimpses of sickness, suffering and death. The world, once a thing of glory, becomes a labyrinth.