Sony Pictures Classics has taken The Julia Set, Niki Byrne’s debut and starring Chase Infiniti as a college math genius, for the U.S. and a slew of international territories.
Terms of the sales agreement were not disclosed, but the deal follows a Toronto Film Festival bow for the coming-of-age drama starring One Battle After Another breakout Chase Infiniti, along with Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson. “Seeing the enthusiastic response at TIFF confirms what promises to be a great theatrical success as well as cements that Chase Infiniti’s much lauded performance in One Battle After Another was no accident,” the special distributor said in a statement on Friday.
That judgement was shared by The Hollywood Reporter film reviewer David Rooney in his TIFF review: “The still waters and intriguing depths conveyed by Chase Infiniti in The Julia Set offer proof positive that the magnetic One Battle After Another discovery has the goods to carry a movie.”
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another marked Infiniti’s feature debut, and The Julia Set was her follow up film. Infiniti will next star in the mysterious horror feature Portrait of God from rising director Dylan Clark, who wrote the script with Joe Russo.
Sony Pictures Classics has taken The Julia Set taking place in the world of competitive mathematics and academia for the U.S., Benelux, Switzerland, Italy, Scandinavia, Spain, the UK, Eastern Europe (excluding Poland), Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Israel and Asia (excluding Singapore).
In her own statement, Byrne welcomed Sony Pictures Classics releasing her movie in theaters: “Growing up, I didn’t understand that people made movies. I thought they were the purview of the gods, that they fell out of the sky, and if we were lucky, we caught them. For 35 years, my entire lifetime, Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and their team at Sony Pictures Classics have made sure audiences catch the movies worth catching. I couldn’t be prouder to add The Julia Set to their extraordinary library, and to know it will be seen the way movies are meant to be seen: in a darkened theater, together.”
The Julia Set, written and directed by Byrne, centers on Infiniti as Julia Fischer, a gifted young math genius.
A synopsis from the producers adds: “She is also the most practiced at hiding it. When she’s recruited into an elite prep course culminating in the most punishing exam in mathematics, while at the same time falling into a romantic relationship with her charismatic teaching assistant, Pascal (Christopher Briney), Julia must find the strength to follow the path she was destined to take. As Pascal crumbles under the weight of his overbearing father Aleksander’s (Jason Isaacs) suffocating expectations, it is Pascal’s mother, Anne (Gillian Anderson), who helps Julia recognize and seize a moment of opportunity that will help to define her future.”
The Julia Set is produced by Midsommar‘s Jeffrey Penman, The Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Maze Runner‘s Lee Stollman. Also producing are Anderson, Nick Scherma, Tayler Haynes, Andrey Epifanov and Eleonora Granata-Jenkinson.
The distribution deal was negotiated between Sony Pictures Classics and Gersh.