Culture 3 min read By Lauren Baxter
California Pictures takes on world sales for Bengali gothic horror The Undying
California Pictures has boarded worldwide sales for The Undying, a Bengali-language gothic horror adapted from a Rabindranath Tagore short story and produced by Los Angeles-based AK Studios. The completed film will be shown to buyers at the American Film Market.
California Pictures has taken on worldwide sales rights for The Undying, a Bengali-language gothic horror film that will be presented to international buyers at the American Film Market. The project is produced by AK Studios, which is based in Los Angeles, and the deal was first reported by Deadline as an exclusive.
The film is adapted from a short story by Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali writer and Nobel laureate whose work has long been a touchstone of Indian literature. The story is set in 19th-century rural Bengal and follows a young woman named Kadambini, whose experience anchors the film's gothic atmosphere. Bringing a literary classic into the horror genre gives the project a distinct identity in a market where genre titles often rely on familiar formulas, and it places a regional-language production in front of buyers who would not otherwise encounter it.
Because the film is already complete, the American Film Market screenings allow buyers to evaluate the finished picture rather than a script or a pitch. Sales agents typically use the market to secure distribution deals across territories, and a finished Bengali-language title offers distributors a concrete proposition for expanding their international slates. The presentation at the market therefore marks the stage at which the film moves from production into the business of finding audiences abroad.
The announcement also sits within a busy week for film sales at the market, where Alief has separately boarded Borges and Me as its sales agent. The film, directed by Marc Turtletaub and produced by Big Beach, adapts Jay Parini's novelized memoir and stars Fionn Whitehead. Alief, which operates from France and the United Kingdom, has reportedly closed major theatrical sales for the title. The two deals show two very different entry points for buyers, one a genre piece rooted in South Asian literature and the other a memoir-based drama with an established producing partner.
Both projects illustrate how the American Film Market continues to function as a central meeting point for independent cinema, where completed films and literary properties are introduced to distributors from many countries at once. Agents who attend the market frequently rely on such presentations to test interest before wider release plans are set.
The source material does not give further deal terms for either project, including the territories covered by the California Pictures agreement, the release window, or the financial details of the transactions. Those terms remain unconfirmed, and no buyers or distribution partners have been named in the available reporting.
Source: deadline.com
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