Paramount Vantage acquires worldwide rights to 'American Teen'

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I was just sent the following press release from a Chicago publicist:

Paramount Vantage Acquires Worldwide Rights to “American Teen”

PARK CITY, UT, January 23, 2008 – Paramount Vantage has acquired worldwide distribution rights, excluding the United Kingdom, to Nanette Burstein’s documentary, AMERICAN TEEN. Nick Meyer, President of Paramount Vantage, announced today.

AMERICAN TEEN intimately follows the lives of four teenagers in one small town in Indiana through their senior year of high school. Using cinema vérité footage, interviews, and animation, it presents a candid portrait of being a teenager and all that goes with it. A modern day “Breakfast Club”, we see the insecurities, the cliques, the jealousies, the first loves and heartbreaks, and the struggle to make profound decisions about the future.

“This was the most entertaining and uplifting film we saw at Sundance,” said Meyer. “It’s a movie that we believe audiences will embrace worldwide.”

Nanette Burstein’s NYU thesis film turned into her first feature-length documentary, On the Ropes, which won a Special Jury Prize at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, along with the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement and the International Documentary Association’s award for best documentary film. It was also nominated for an Academy Award. She coproduced and directed The Kid Stays in the Picture, which premiered at Sundance in 2002 and also screened at Cannes. Burstein’s other producing/directing credits include the five-part series Say it Loud: A Celebration of Black Music in America for VH1.

AMERICAN TEEN is an A&E Indiefilms Presentation of a Firehouse Films and Quasiworld Entertainment production in association with 57th and Irving. Nanette Burstein, Jordan Roberts, Eli Gonda and Chris Huddleston produced. The film was represented by Cinetic Media and CAA and was negotiated by Jeffrey Freedman, Executive Vice President, Business Affairs and Operations, on behalf of Paramount Vantage. Amy Israel, Executive Vice President, Production and Acquisitions, and Ben Cotner, Director, Acquisitions and Co-Productions, will oversee the project for Paramount Vantage.

About Paramount Pictures Corporation
Paramount Pictures Corporation (PPC), a global producer and distributor of filmed entertainment, is a unit of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), a leading content company with prominent and respected film, television and digital entertainment brands. The company’s labels include Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Paramount Classics, MTV Films, Nickelodeon Movies and DreamWorks Studios. PPC operations also include Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment, Paramount Home Entertainment, Paramount Pictures International, Paramount Licensing Inc., Paramount Studios, and Worldwide Television Distribution.