Neon has acquired the worldwide distribution rights to “Spaceship Earth,” Matt Wolf’s documentary about the Biosphere 2 project from 1991 that made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Neon announced Thursday.
The film played in the U.S. Documentary competition and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize.
Neon now looks to have had an active Sundance after partnering with Hulu on the record-breaking sale for “Palm Springs” and more recently acquiring the Elisabeth Moss thriller “Shirley.”
Using archive material and present-day interviews with surviving Biospherians, the documentary follows a group of counter-cultural visionaries who, in 1991, built an enormous replica of Earth’s ecosystem called Biosphere 2. When eight “biospherians” went to live sealed inside, they faced ecological calamities and cult accusations. Their epic adventure is a cautionary tale about the forces that threaten our planet, and also an inspirational tribute to what a small creative group can achieve.
“Spaceship Earth” was produced by Stacey Reiss and Wolf. Tom Quinn and Jeff Deutchman negotiated the deal for NEON along with Cinetic Sales Group on behalf of the filmmakers.
Executive producers are RadicalMedia’s Jon Kamen, Dave Sirulnick, and Stanley Buchthal, Impact Partners’ Dan Cogan, Jenny Raskin and Geralyn White Dreyfous, Paula Froehle, Steve Cohen, Pierre Hauser, Nion McEvoy, Leslie Berriman, Lessing Stern, Andrea van Beuren and Sarah Johnson.
Wolf’s previous feature documentaries include “Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell,” about the cult cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell, “Teenage,” about early youth culture and the birth of teenagers, and “Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project,” about the activist Marion Stokes, who recorded television 24 hours a day for 30 years.
Neon of course over the weekend was behind the Best Picture winner “Parasite” from director Bong Joon Ho, whose film picked up four Oscars and was the first non-English language film to ever win Best Picture.
Variety first reported the news of the sale.