EXCLUSIVE: Focus Features and Green Book producer Jim Burke are teaming up to produce music biopic Dreamin’ Wild, which will be written and directed by Bill Pohlad (Love & Mercy). Based on a long-read article by Steven Kurutz in mini-magazine True Story, the blue-chip movie prospect will follow the real-life story of…

EXCLUSIVE: Grey Rembert has exited GK Films to join Bill Pohlad's River Road Entertainment as the company’s new executive VP of production. She will be responsible for finding and developing projects at River Road, which has produced and financed some of the best independent films in recent years including the 2014…

EXCLUSIVE: In a deal worth $3 million, Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions have acquired U.S. and Canada rights to Love & Mercy, the Bill Pohlad-directed film that stars Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks, Paul Giamatti and John Cusack. Written by Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner, the film is an unconventional look at the…

River Road Entertainment picked up the project in June, and now company founder Bill Pohlad has decided to direct Love And Mercy himself, casting Paul Dano as the young version of the Beach Boys frontman. Pohlad is still looking for someone to play the older version. Here’s today’s release: LOS ANGELES, CA, January…

EXCLUSIVE: After seeing so many of his novels turned into films, Nick Hornby is taking on the work of a peer. He has signed to write the script for Wild, the bestselling Cheryl Strayed memoir that Pacific Standard's Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea have set up with River Road Entertainment's Bill Pohlad…

River Road Entertainment has acquired the rights to Pulitzer Prize finalist Greg Grandin’s Fordlandia: The Rise And Fall Of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City. Screenwriter Ben Coccio, who most recently penned Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines starring Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, will write the…

EXCLUSIVE: Bill Pohlad’s River Road Entertainment has optioned screen rights to the Joanna Smith Rakoff novel My Salinger Year, and has set Emma Forrest to write the script. Smith Rakoff’s novel, which will be published by Knopf in the winter, is inspired by the author’s own experiences as a college grad who takes a…

EXCLUSIVE: River Road Entertainment optioned screen rights to The Age of Miracles, a first novel by Karen Thompson Walker that sold in a 7-figure deal to Random House and 24 international territories. Hanna scribe Seth Lochhead has been set to write the script. The film will be produced by River Road principal Bill Poh…

EXCLUSIVE: After opening Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life in the U.S., Fox Searchlight presidents Nancy Utley and Stephen Gilula have acquired the U.K. rights to the film from Bill Pohlad’s River Road Entertainment, which financed the film. They’ve dated the film for July 8 opening in the U.K. The film, which stars B…

What a difference a year makes. On the eve of 2010 Cannes, Bill Pohlad's plan to build Apparition into a powerhouse specialty film distributor was dashed by Bob Berney's stunning decision to take an out in his contract, just as Pohlad and the Apparition team were boarding flights to Nice. A year later, Pohlad is back…

A new trailer is up for Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, the passion project of Bill Pohlad’s River Road that will be distributed next year by Fox…

Fox Searchlight has acquired the Terrence Malick-directed The Tree of Life from Bill Pohlad’s River Road Entertainment. Though the film might be an awards season magnet with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn starring, the distributor is flush with those kinds of films already, and will release in 2011. At the Toronto…