Continuing on with the lukewarm Sundance buyers market, Samuel Goldwyn has picked up the U.S. rights to director Sophie Barthes’ sci-fi drama Cold Souls, which stars Paul Giamatti as himself. In the film, which I reviewed positively at Sundance — and still continues to stick in my mind — Giamatti’s anxiety over a role on Broadway leads him to try a very experimental procedure in which his soul is removed and stored, leaving him to act without the hindrance of his dark emotions. All is well and good — even to the point of him leasing the soul of a Russian poet to help his artistic state — until a group of Russian soul smugglers steals his soul and delivers it to a ditzy soap opera star in St. Petersburg.

Its a very interesting and well-written film with a central performance from Giamatti that is a lot of fun. For more, check out my review from Sundance here. Reps from Samuel Goldwyn are saying that the distributor is eying a late summer release.