James Gray Will Compete at Cannes After All as Neon Buys His ‘Paper Tiger’

The latest news in the ongoing chess match between Neon and MUBI, seemingly the only distribution shingles buying festival movies right now, over Cannes acquisitions: Neon has bought James Gray‘s “Paper Tiger” for North American distribution, as first reported by Variety.

That also leads to news that Gray’s “very indie” latest drama (according to Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux, who has been chasing the film) is now set to compete in Cannes’ official competition. IndieWire confirmed both the Neon sale and the film’s Cannes Film Festival status.

“Paper Tiger” brings the total number of films vying for the Palme d’Or to 22. It’s tipped as a crime thriller, and it stars Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, and Miles Teller. (They’re all Gray first-timers, though Johansson and Driver co-starred together in Noah Baumbach’s 2019 “Marriage Story.”)

In other words, Neon really, really wants that seventh consecutive Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or; the company, after all, released past winners “Parasite,” “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Anora,” and “It Was Just an Accident” stateside.

IndieWire has reached out to representatives at Cannes.

The film, per an official synopsis, centers on two brothers who become “entangled in a scheme that turns out to be too good to be true… As they try to navigate their way through an ever-more dangerous world of corruption and violence, they find themselves and their family brutally terrorized by the Russian ‘Mafiya.’ Their bond begins to fray, and betrayal — once utterly unthinkable — now becomes all too possible.”

Neon already has a number of competition titles set for the festival, including Na Hong-Jin’s “Hope,” Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Sheep in a Box,” Arthur Harari’s “The Unknown,” Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord,” and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden.”

Gray is a Cannes perennial, having premiered “Armageddon Time,” “The Immigrant,” “Two Lovers,” “We Own the Night,” and “The Yards” in competition. He’s now one of two American directors in competition this year, opposite Ira Sachs with “The Man I Love,” in an otherwise international-only lineup.

Producers on “Paper Tiger” include Rodrigo Teixeira with RT Features and Anthony Katagas with AK Productions, plus Raffaella Leone, Gary Farkas, Marco Perego, Carlo Salem, and Andrea Bucko. Executive producers include Lee Broda, Jeff Rice, Riccardo Maddalosso, and Emily Salveson.

The other company to make a sizable splash so far in terms of Cannes pre-buys has been Mubi, with “Minotaur” and “Fatherland,” plus “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” in Un Certain Regard.