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'Calvary' rights snapped up by Fox Searchlight at Sundance

Irish actor Brendan Gleeson attends the "British Independent Film Awards" at Old Billingsgate Market in London on December 4, 2011. UPI/Rune Hellestad
Irish actor Brendan Gleeson attends the "British Independent Film Awards" at Old Billingsgate Market in London on December 4, 2011. UPI/Rune Hellestad | License Photo

PARK CITY, Utah, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Fox Searchlight says it has acquired the U.S. distribution rights to "Calvary," starring Brendan Gleeson, and plans to release the Irish film this year.

Searchlight Pictures Presidents Nancy Utley and Stephen Gilula announced the acquisition Tuesday.

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Gleeson reunited with his "The Guard" writer-director John Michael McDonagh for "Calvary," which recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival.

Gleeson previously starred in "In Bruges," a dark comedy written and directed by McDonagh's brother, Martin.

"Calvary" co-stars Chris O'Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran, Isaach De Bankole, M. Emmet Walsh, Marie-Josee Croze, Domhnall Gleeson, David Wilmot, Pat Shortt, Gary Lydon, Killian Scott, Orla O'Rourke, Owen Sharpe and David McSavage.

"Brendan Gleeson gives a tour de force performance in a film that John Michael McDonagh has written and directed with perfection, taking us into a world with distinctive characters where the stakes are high," Gilula and Utley said in a joint statement.

"We made a great film. In Fox Searchlight, we now have a great company behind us to send that film out into the world. Thank you, Sundance. Thank you, bourbon! Onward," said McDonagh.

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"Father James is a good priest who is faced with sinister and troubling circumstances brought about by a mysterious member of his parish," a synopsis said. "Although he continues to comfort his own fragile daughter and reach out to help members of his church with their various scurrilous moral -- and often comic -- problems, he feels sinister and troubling forces closing in, and begins to wonder if he will have the courage to face his own personal Calvary."

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