Paris-based Indie Sales has boarded “Moomins on the Riviera,” a toon feature based on the popular Finnish comicbooks.
The comedy adventure feature marks the first bigscreen adaptation of the Moomins, a comicbook franchise was created by Finnish author and illustrator Tove Jansson in the 1940s.
Indie Sales, launched at Cannes by former sales and acquisitions topper Nicolas Eschbach and producer Eric Neve, has nabbed worldwide distribution rights (excluding Scandinavia and France), and is kicking off pre-sales at Toronto.
Nordisk Film will distribute across Scandinavia, while Gebeka will release the film in Gaul.
Toon features the entire Moomin clan as they take off on an adventure on the glamorous Riviera.
A Finnish-Franco co-production, “Moomins” is produced and directed by Hanna Hemila at Handle Productions and Xavier Picard at Pictak.
“Xavier and Hanna have done a superb job in maintaining the timeless humor, tone and pictorial quality of the Moomins in a sophisticated adventure for the whole family,” said Eschbach, adding that the toon will be keeping Jansson’s original creed, “Live in peace, plant potatoes and dream.”
“Moomins” will be delivered in the second quarter of 2014. Rolling off Toronto, it will be presented at the Finnish Film Affair, taking place Sept. 24-26 in Helsinki.
