HBO Go Bananas for James Marsh’s ‘Project Nim’

I’m not sure how this compares to previous years, but there are several pre-Sundance festival deals being announced including this docu-film pick-up. Looking to get into more involved in the theatrical release not just video/broadcast portion of the business, HBO have taken all U.S. rights to James Marsh’s Project Nim – the opening docu film for this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Gist: This is the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the mid-1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. Following Nim’s extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature – and indeed our own – is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.

Worth Noting: Producer Simon Chinn and director James Marsh’s last documentary film won Oscar. I don’t think I need to mention what the title was.

Do We Care?: Marsh recently told IndieWIRE that the “structure of “Project Nim” owes a lot to the Bresson film – we also try to see the drama and sometimes folly in the human world through the eyes of our chimpanzee.” We were sold on the docu beforehand and look forward in seeing how this template is used.