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Exclusive: Vertical has snapped up North American rights to Miranda’s Victim, a courtroom drama starring Academy Award nominee Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) that world premiered as the opener for the 2023 Santa Barbara Film Festival. Pic is slated for a day-and-date release on October 6th, with Arclight Films aboard to handle international sales.

Based on true events, the film tells the story of 18-year-old Trish Weir (Breslin), who in 1963 was kidnapped and sexually assaulted. After a voluntary confession, her assailant, Ernesto Miranda (Sebastian Quinn), is convicted. But the verdict is later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court since his confession was made without an attorney present. In the resulting retrial, a determined prosecutor (Luke Wilson) seeks to hold Miranda fully accountable, notwithstanding a rigorous defense from Miranda’s attorney (Ryan Phillippe).

What follows is a legal proceeding that will forever change the nation’s justice system. Weir’s...

Michelle Danner directed completed film.

Arclight Films has boarded international sales rights to the completed biographical crime thriller Miranda’s Victim starring Abigail Breslin, Luke Wilson, Andy Garcia, Ryan Phillippe, Kyle MacLachlan and Donald Sutherland and is introducing the project to Cannes buyers this week.

Michelle Danner directed the courtroom thriller based on the origin of the Miranda Rights, which stipulate that arresting officers must notify detainees of certain rights prior to questioning.

J. Craig Stiles, George Kolber and Richard Lasser co-wrote the screenplay based on a story by Kolber that follows 18-year-old Patricia Weir, who triggered a law after she...

LONDON -- British Production Company Firefly Films, headed by Matthew Hobbs, is prepping early drafts for a movie based around the Beslan tragedy in Russia that saw a school in the Russian village taken siege for three days in 2004. The standoff resulted in the deaths of more than 350 people, over half of them children. Hobbs and Firefly associate producer Alexander Faleev, a Russian national, have commissioned screenwriter Richard Lasser, a one-time Russian interpreter in the former Soviet Union, to pen the initial draft of Beslan. The movie will focus on the stories of the families and teachers whose lives were torn apart, and also will delve into the lives of the hostagetakers, reconstructing the back story of the only surviving hostagetaker, Nurpashi Kulayev, producers said. A Russian court sentenced the 25-year-old Chechen to life in prison late last month.