Magnolia Pictures has acquired U.S. rights to Kevin Macdonald's doomsday thriller "How I Live Now," which stars Saoirse Ronan, the company announced on Thursday.
Magnolia is eyeing a fall theatrical release through its Magnet label.
Produced by Charles Steel, Alasdair Flind, Andrew Ruhemann and John Battsek, the film is based on the award-winning novel by Meg Rosoff.
Set in the near-future UK, Ronan plays Daisy, an American teenager sent to stay with relatives in the English countryside. As she warms up to her surroundings and and strikes up a romance with the handsome Edmund (George MacKay), tense news reports emerge of an escalating conflict in Europe. As the UK falls into a violent, chaotic military state, Daisy finds herself hiding and fighting to survive.
“Grandly scaled, beautifully crafted, with a terrific performance from the always great Saoirse Ronan, 'How I Live Now' is equally successful as a tense apocalyptic thriller and a great teenage romance,” said Magnolia president Eamonn Bowles.
Magnolia's Dori Begley and Peter Van Steemburg negotiated the deal with CAA, which repped the filmmakers.
