Malick's "The Tree of Life" DID PLAY TELLURIDE...Sort of

So, it turns out that the most elusive film of the last year and a half DID PLAY in Telluride last week...to an incredibly limited audience.

Anne Thompson of Thompson On Hollywood at Indiewire reports this morning that there were two separate screenings of the Terrence Malick film that features Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. Here is the link to her story from this morning:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/2010/09/13/waiting_for_malick_which_film_fest_will_debut_tree_of_life/#more

The screenings were apparently done separately for Sony Picture Classics and Fox Searchlight. As we reported last week, Fox bought the film from Apparition.

As we have mentioned, we sat with the Apparition folks at the Patron Brunch on Friday (Sept. 3) and they were very tight-lipped. We even suggested that they seemed sort of uptight...now we probably have a pretty good idea why.

So, what's it all mean? In the wake of the sale to Fox Search last week, there has already been a ton of speculation about the path "Tree" will take, but we'd estimate that 99% of it says its release will be in 2011...somewhere, somehow. I've seen mention of Sundance, Cannes and All the way to the fall fests and Venice next September. Or could it boomerang back to Telluride for TFF #38? We shall see.