Vertical Entertainment has acquired the US distribution rights to Burn Your Maps, an adventure drama starring Jacob Tremblay, Academy Award nominee Vera Farmiga and Academy Award winner Virginia Madsen. The theatrical release is planned for Q2 this year. Warner Bros. Pictures will be handling international distribution.

A family in emotional turmoil is taken by surprise in this quirky adventure where an eccentric 8-year-old American boy, Wes, has an existential epiphany: he believes that he is in fact a Mongolian goat herder.

“Burn Your Maps is a funny, heartwarming, and deeply human portrait of a family navigating hardship,” said Rich Goldberg, co-President, Vertical Entertainment. “Anchored by touching performances from Jacob Tremblay and Vera Farmiga, we can’t wait for audiences to journey alongside them as they find meaning, purpose and happiness in the extraordinary setting of Mongolia.”

The film was directed by Jordan Roberts; with the screenplay by Jordan Roberts (writer of BIG HERO SIX and MARCH OF THE PENGUINS) based on the short story by Robyn Joy Leff. The film was produced by Cinelou Films, Big Wheel Entertainment and Defender Films in association with the Fyzz Facility Limited and Mad Riot Entertainment.

Producers were: Courtney Solomon, Mark Canton, Patrick Aiello and Julie Kirkham with the film being co-produced by Stephanie Caleb, Pavlina Hatoupis, David Hopwood, and Tracey Landon.

Executive producers were: Wayne Marc Godfrey, Robert Jones, Scott Karol, Arnaud Lannic, Mark Axelowitz, Babak Eftekhari and Lawrence Smith.

The deal was negotiated by Peter Jarowey and Josh Spector for Vertical and Ian Brereton on behalf of Cinelou Films. Tremblay is represented by UTA, Play Management, and Shelter PR. Farmiga is represented by CAA, Authentic Talent and Literary Management and, ID Public Relations. Madsen is represented by Untitled Entertainment.

Cara Delevingne, Dan Stevens, Eric Stoltz, Virginia Madsen, and Dylan Gelula have joined the cast of Bow and Arrow Entertainment’s music drama “Her Smell,” starring Elisabeth Moss. Alex Ross Perry is directing from his own script. Previously announced cast includes Amber Heard, Ashley Benson, Agyness Deyn, and Gayle Rankin. 

Voltage Pictures is selling international rights at the Cannes Film Festival. Elisabeth Moss is producing alongside Matthew Perniciaro and Michael Sherman of Bow and Arrow Entertainment, Adam Piotrowicz, and Perry. Endeavor Content is representing domestic sales for the film.

Elisabeth Moss stars as Becky Something, a maniacally destructive punk rock star and leader of the seminal all-female rock band Something She, who pushes her relationships with bandmates, family, and followers to the limit as she wages a years-long war against sobriety, while attempting to re-engage the creativity that had once led her band to massive crossover success. Delevingne will star as the leader of a new, younger female band called the Akergirls, which bursts onto the scene with Moss’ character becoming their mentor. The film features original songs written by Alicia Bognanno of Bully and Anika Pyle.

Delevingne is repped by WME, Stevens by WME, Stoltz by UTA and Landmark Artists Management, Madsen by UTA and Untitled Entertainment, Gelula by CAA and MGMT Entertainment and Darville by Paradigm and Echo Lake Entertainment.

The new film 1985 revisits a dark time in gay history, when the AIDS crisis ended so many promising lives. But actress Virginia Madsen, who plays a mother losing her son to the still-mysterious “gay cancer,” sees the film as surprisingly optimistic.

“There is a hopeful message,” she says. “It’s all right, you can be who you are. You can be questioning. You can be nonbinary. Whatever your identity is, you can stand strong in those shoes.” That may seem a buoyant takeaway from a movie built on so tragic a premise. The film, directed by Yen Tan and starring the recently out Cory Michael Smith in the lead role of Adrian, follows a closeted young man returning home to Texas from New York to share with his family that he’s dying. The film premiered at South by Southwest, has since screened at the Sarasota Film Festival, and will play at the Dallas International Film Festival in May.

The period in which the film takes place corresponds to Madsen’s days as a young actress in Hollywood. And while she enjoyed fame from roles in films like Dune, she also remembers the tragedy of the era, losing friends and family to an ailment no one yet understood. “It was terrifying, just because nobody knew anything,” she says. “If you had a friend who had those marks on his skin, it was like, ‘It’s going to happen,’ and there was nothing I could do but put my arms around them.”

Madsen lost family to the disease as well. Her uncle Chicky, who moved to San Francisco when Madsen was a child and become largely estranged from the family, died in 1989. The official line to the world was cancer, but it fell on Madsen to explain the truth to Chicky’s mother. “She didn’t know,” Madsen recalls. “She wondered, ‘Did I do something wrong?’ I just talked to her a long time and told her what I knew. I’m sure she would have loved to have been there.”

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