“Ennio,” the hotly anticipated Ennio Morricone doc by Oscar-winning Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore has sold to a slew of territories ahead of its world premiere Friday at the Venice Film Festival
Block 2 Distribution, which is the sales arm of Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai’s Jet Tone films, has announced sales of the doc to Germany and Austria (Koch Media), Benelux (Periscope), France (Le Pacte), Scandinavia and Baltics (Non Stop Entertainment), Italy (Lucky Red), Japan (GAGA) and China (Blossoms Island Pictures).
“Ennio” will also go out across the Middle East via (Front Row) and has been additionally sold to Poland (Best Film), Spain (Karma Films) and Turkey (Filmarti).
Negotiations for sales to other territories are underway on the Lido.
Morricone who is among the most prolific and admired composers in film history –– and who died last year at 91 –– had a very close rapport with Tornatore, having composed the score for all his films including “Cinema Paradiso,” which won the international Oscar in 1989.
To make the long-gestating “Ennio” doc, Tornatore interviewed a group of high-caliber filmmakers comprising Bernardo Bertolucci, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Springsteen, and Quincy Jones.
These interviews are interweaved with fragments of Morricone’s private life, his recordings, and from Morricone’s sold out live concerts around the world.
Morricone, starting in 1946, composed over 500 scores for film and television, as well as over 100 pieces of music for orchestral performance.
At least a dozen of his scores became film-score classics, from the so-called spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, including Sergio Leone’s “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “Once Upon a Time in the West” to Cannes Palm d’Or-winning Roland Joffe film “The Mission” and “Cinema Paradiso” of the 1980s.
Morricone was nominated six times for Oscars — for “Days of Heaven,” “The Mission,” “The Untouchables,” “Bugsy,” “Malena” and “The Hateful Eight,” winning for the last of these. In 2006 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences presented him with an honorary Oscar for “his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music.” He was only the second composer in Oscar history to receive an honorary award for his body of work.
“Ennio” is produced by Italy’s Gabriele Costa and Gianni Russo (Piano b produzioni) with Peter De Maegd (Potemkino), San Fu Maltha (Terras) and Wong Kar Wai (Blossoms Island Pictures). Tom Yoda (GAGA) and Tom Hameeuw (Potemkino) are co-producers. Piano b produzioni is the lead production company with Potemkino, Terras, GAGA and Blossoms Island Pictures as co-production partners.