Sony Pictures Classics started the Sundance Film Festival acquisitions market off early, acquiring US and select international territories on the Florian Zeller-directed The Father. The adaptation of Zellers’s stage play stars Anthony Hopkins, the actor who is up for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The Two Popes, and Oscar-winning The Favourite star Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell and Olivia Williams.  The film has its premiere Monday, Feb. 27 and it was a title a lot of buyers had their eye on.

Hopkins and Colman play father and daughter, one mischievous, the other caring, who battle the universal prophecy of loss that comes with age.

The films is now sold out worldwide. Embankment pre-sold international territories to independent distributors including Canada (Elevation), UK (Lionsgate), Benelux (Cineart), Germany (Tobis), Switzerland (Ascot Elite), Italy (Sunfilm), Spain (A Contracorriente), Scandinavia (Atlantic), Japan (Hakuhodo), Australia/New Zealand (Sharmill), Latin America (California). France is distributed by UGC, Orange and Canal Plus.

Zeller wrote the script with Christopher Hampton. It launched as a play in Paris in 2012 and won the Moliere Award, before moving to the West End and Broadway.  Pic was backed by Elarof’s Christophe Spadone and UK’s Film4.

CAA and UTA brokered the deal with Embankment.