Fashion designer and film director Tom Ford will be toasting his success at Cannes, after his upcoming film Nocturnal Animals was bought by Universal Studios for $20 million, the highest price paid for a film at the 2015 festival so far. The film had generated a bit of negative gossip when George Clooney, who had been announced as a producer, left the project. But rumors that he had fallen out with Ford were rubbished by Clooney, who told Page Six, “No falling out at all. It was just scheduling… I love the project and think Tom is fantastic. We just couldn’t do it when he needed to go.”
Nocturnal Animals, which will star Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal, is an adaptation of Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony and Susan. The story follows Susan (Adams), who becomes engrossed with a book manuscript written by her ex-husband that depicts the life of a man who takes his family on a holiday that descends into violence, leading Susan to muse on some hidden truths about herself and her previous marriage. Ford wrote the adaptation himself.
The film follows Ford’s visually gorgeous debut, A Single Man, which garnered critical acclaim and a shelf-full of awards, as well as an Oscar nomination for lead Colin Firth, when it was released in 2009.
Nocturnal Animals is set to be released in 2017.