Cannes: IM Global Takes Reel FX’s ‘Wish Police’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Completing one of the most powerful sales slates line-ups of company heading towards Cannes next week, IM Global has taken international sales rights to “Wish Police,” one of the awaited new animation movies from Reel FX, the studio currently creating “Scooby-Doo 2” for Warner Bros. which also made Jorge Gutierrez’s Golden Globe-nominated “The Book of Life” for Fox.

To be introduced by IM Global to buyers at next week’s Cannes Film Market, “Wish Police” weighs in as one of the biggest indie pieces of high-profile family entertainment currently on the open market which can score wide-release U.S distribution from either a studio or a big domestic distributor.

First revealed by Reel FX in December 2015, “Wish Police” is being directed by the Spanish trio known as Headless of Adrian Garcia, Alfredo Torres and Victor Maldonado. Screenplay is “King Fu Panda’s” story writers Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris.

Adapting the same-titled novella by Daniel Nayeri, “Wish Police” imagines a world where kids’ bad wishes can materialize as villains, needing a worldwide secret organization, The Wish Police – headed by ex-genie Saul and a wise-cracking monkey – to monitor and apprehend them. The task force teams with a 12-year-old Randy, whose extremely bad thought has unleashed the most powerful wish villain ever known.

Headless directed “Nocturna,” about an orphan’s fear of the dark, an admired delicately-drawn fantasy laced animation movie made back in 2007 in Spain.

“Wish Police” joins a slate which, announced Thursday by the entertainment business publications in quick-fire succession, is led in terms of commercial scale by two titles sure to attract bigger buyers interest on the Croisette: the Scott Rudin-produced prestige epic Western “Blood Meridian,” with Russell Crowe, Tye Sheridan and Ryan Reynolds, and James Franco directing; thriller “Jackpot,” with Mila Kunis and Bryan Cranston. In a variegated line-up, IM Global will also be selling Barbara Broccoli’s passion project “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool,” with Annette Bening, based on Brit actress Gloria Grahame’s biography, with Colin Vaines producing; and, also announced today Thursday, the Scott Free Productions-produced docu-feature “Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of My Life,” based on the autobiography of Davis, who became president of Columbia Records at the age of 35 in 1967.

Related stories

Cannes: IM Global Financing Clive Davis Documentary

Hollywood Drives Europe to All-Time $8.2 Billion Box Office High

Cannes Sets 'Hands of Stone' Special Screening as Tribute to Robert De Niro

Get more from Variety and Variety411: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter