Jeff Nichols to ‘Take Shelter’ Under Sony Pictures Classics Label

When I mentioned that we should expect Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter “to be quickly picked-up by serious indie-minded studio looking to push Shannon’s performance during award season”, I hadn’t factored in a pre-festival buy. Selected in the U.S Dramatic Competition at Sundance, Sony Pictures Classics have prevented the other distributors from speculating on if this indie-minded/Hollywood effects jacked-up project might work as a bona-fide theatrical release item.

Gist: They’re calling this is a “haunting tale that will creep under your skin and expose your darkest fears” — I’m down with that. Curtis LaForche (Shannon) lives in a small town in Ohio with his wife, Samantha (Chastain), and daughter, Hannah, a six-year-old deaf girl. When Curtis begins to have terrifying dreams, he keeps the visions to himself, channeling his anxiety into obsessively building a storm shelter in his backyard. His seemingly inexplicable behavior concerns and confounds those closest to him, but the resulting strain on his marriage and tension within his community can’t compare with Curtis’s privately held fear of what his dreams may truly signify.

Worth Noting: Usually working on big ticket studio items including Jonathan Liebesman’s World Invasion: Battle LA, this is perhaps the first time that Greg and Colin Strause’s Hydraulx Entertainment worked on a low-budget indie item.

Do We Care?: We ranked this in our number #16 spot in our Top 100 Most Anticipated Films for 2011 based on his breakout debut film, Shotgun Stories. Here’s hoping that SPC think big in terms of audience reach if this is indeed a film of the sort.