Studios chase Florence Pugh’s $70M ‘Midnight Library’ in Cannes’ biggest non-franchise bet

For a decade, Hollywood’s working assumption has been that a movie without a franchise behind it cannot command real theatrical money — that the mid-budget, adult-skewing drama now survives mainly as streaming filler. The bidding war taking shape around The Midnight Library at the Cannes market is the loudest argument against that idea in some time: a roughly $70 million fantasy drama, with no sequel hooks and no cinematic universe, pulling three major studios into the kind of scramble usually reserved for IP with a number after its title.

As Deadline first reported, Paramount, Focus Features and Sony are all circling domestic and select international rights to the film, which pairs Florence Pugh with Lion director Garth Davis. That combination is the entire pitch. Pugh has spent the past few years proving she can anchor both blockbusters and intimate dramas, moving between Dune: Part Two and We Live in Time without losing the audience’s trust, while Davis carries the awards-season prestige of a filmmaker whose debut earned six Oscar nominations.

The source material does heavy lifting of its own. Matt Haig’s novel sold in the millions and lingered on bestseller lists for years; its premise — a woman suspended between life and death who gets to live out the lives she didn’t choose — is the rare literary high-concept that translates cleanly into a trailer. For a studio, that promises a built-in readership and a marketing hook that doesn’t require teaching the audience a new mythology.

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The scale of the chase says something about where the theatrical business believes its next growth will come from. With franchise fatigue a recurring headline and streamers pulling back from the prestige spending spree of a few years ago, a packaged star vehicle with literary pedigree has become a scarce commodity — and scarcity is what turns a market screening into an auction. Whichever studio wins is effectively wagering that the grown-up movie still belongs on the multiplex calendar, not just the home screen.

A budget in the region of $70 million would place the project among the most expensive independently financed films seeking distribution at this year’s market, and a deal at that level would likely rank as the biggest to emerge from Cannes. Casting beyond Pugh and a shooting timeline have not yet been announced.

If the number lands near nine figures for a film with no franchise attached, every financier walking the Croisette will leave with the same memo: the bet on one bankable face and a good book is back on the table.

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