Spring Breakers U.S. Distribution Rights Picked Up By Annapurna Pictures

Selena Gomez and James Franco in Spring Breakers
(Image credit: A24)

The girls are going wild in Harmony Korine's new film Spring Breakers, and Annapurna Pictures (Lawless, The Master) has acquired the U.S. rights to the movie. The announcement was made today, noting that this is the first collaboration between Chris Hanley's Muse Productions and Megan Ellison's Annapurna Pictures.

Spring Breakers was written and directed by Harmony Korine and stars a number of very familiar names, including James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and Glee's Heather Morris. Also among the cast are Rachel Korine, Ashley Benson and Gucci Mane. The film follows four college girls whose attempts to fund their spring break trip go awry, leading to an arrest and their paths eventually crossing with James Franco's Alien, "an infamous local thug who takes them under his wing and leads them on the wildest Spring Break trip in history."

The plot of the movie sounds like sort of a dark comedy, and factoring that in with the mentioned legal trouble, I'm having a flashback of the 2001 Francine McDougall-directed comedy Sugar & Spice, which had a bunch of high school cheerleaders staging a bank robbery in an effort to help one of their own get by after she gets pregnant. My own random associations aside, it's hard to say if Spring Breakers will have a similar tone by the description alone, so hopefully we'll see a trailer for the film soon.

Spring Breakers' worldwide premiere will take place this week at the Venice Film Festival, where it's part of the main competition. Its North American premiere will take place in Toronto this Friday (September 7).

Kelly West
Assistant Managing Editor

Kelly joined CinemaBlend as a freelance TV news writer in 2006 and went on to serve as the site’s TV Editor before moving over to other roles on the site. At present, she’s an Assistant Managing Editor who spends much of her time brainstorming and editing feature content on the site. She an expert in all things Harry Potter, books from a variety of genres (sci-fi, mystery, horror, YA, drama, romance -- anything with a great story and interesting characters.), watching Big Brother, frequently rewatching The Office, listening to Taylor Swift, and playing The Sims.