The first major acquisition has been made at the Toronto International Film Festival with Netflix landing Woman of the Hour, the period crime drama directed by Anna Kendrick in her directorial debut, written by Ian MacAllister McDonald.
The deal is rumoured to be for $11 million and only occurred on the first weekend of the festival because the film had not signed the SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreements, so its cast members could not make the trip to Toronto.
Signatories, especially streamers, cannot make quick deals on productions when they are battling against the WGA and SAG-AGTRA over the fine details of a new deal, so Woman of the Hour had to wait until now to get signed to Netflix.
The film tells of the fact-based story about a young woman who won a date on The Dating Game with another contestant who turned out to be an infamous serial killer called Rodney Alcala.
Alcala was charged with the murder of at least eight women, although his spree may have claimed the lives of as many as 130 females after he posed as a photographer looking for models for his shoots.
The killer was already a sex offender and was recently released from prison, but somehow found his way onto The Dating Game reality show. A contestant (played by Kendrick) called Cheryl Bradshaw chose Alcala (played by Daniel Zovatto) as her date.
However, when he turned out to be a creepy serial killer, Bradshaw chose not to go on the date. Woman of the Hour premiered last Friday (September 8th) at the TIFF.