2013 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Michael Winterbottom’s The Look of Love

Along with Francois Ozon, Michael Winterbottom is easily the most prolific, hardest working and most diverse filmmaker in the business and has lineage to every major film festival one could think of. The filmmaker has been to the fest on five previous occasions to showcase films he has directed Go Now (’96 Sundance), Wonderland (’00 Sundance), 9 Songs (’05 Sundance) and in 2010 he showcased this pair: The Killer Inside Me and The Shock Doctrine. In 2013, The Look of Love (formerly titled The King of Soho) would be a great fit for the fest – as it would secure a U.S theatrical release deal especially with a cast that includes: Imogen Poots, Anna Friel, Stephen Fry, Steve Coogan, Tamsin Egerton and Matt Lucas. Pic will receive a March release in the UK.

Gist: Scripted by Matt Greenhalgh, this is the story of the business and personal life of club proprietor and porn publisher Paul Raymond. After starting his showbusiness career as a mind-reader in a cabaret act, Paul Raymond went on to become Britain’s richest man and a modern King Midas. With an entrepreneurial eye and a realization that sex sells, he began building his empire of gentleman’s clubs, porn magazines and nude theatre – provoking outrage and titillation in equal measure. Raymond’s personal life was as colorful as his revue shows. Coogan will play the eponymous ”King of Soho,” a nickname given to Raymond by the press due to his huge club and property empire.

Production Co./Producers: Melissa Parmenter

Prediction: Premieres Program followed by a definite stop at the Berlin Film Festival.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available