‘Sylvie’s Love’: Amazon Takes Rights To Tessa Thompson Movie

EXCLUSIVE: Amazon has snapped up global rights to Sylvie’s Love for an amount that’s in the high-seven-figure range, we can report tonight.

Eugene Ashe wrote and directed this romance, which played in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Ashe is a former Sony Music recording artist from Harlem, NY, who has performed on numerous film soundtracks and is a fellow of the Writers Guild of America East Diversity Lab at Columbia University.

Set in the summer of 1957 in New York, Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) helps around her father’s record store as she waits for her fiancé to return from war—until sweet saxophonist Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha) walks in looking for a day job to subsidize his residency at the Blue Morocco lounge. Their chance meeting kindles a deep passion in each of them unlike anything they’ve felt before. Sylvie’s mother immediately disapproves and reminds Sylvie of her engagement, while Robert’s band books their first big gig overseas. As time passes, the sexual revolution begins, and Motown becomes king, the two fall in and out of each other’s arms, but never out of love.

Sylvie’s Love is Amazon’s third Sundance pickup this year in addition to the Alan Ball-directed Paul Bettany starrer Uncle Frank, and the Phyllida Lloyd-directed Herself. Uncle Frank repped a $12 million worldwide rights deal as we reported. While some questioned the wisdom of Amazon’s big spends during Sundance 2019 on Late Night, The Report, Brittany Runs a Marathon and Honey Boy, those pics were smart deals per Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke as they largely boosted Amazon Prime, which is now more a priority than theatrical ticket sales.

Endeavor Content brokered the deal.