Found a buyer before its premiere at Locarno: The US rights for Bloody Tennis have gone to Shudder

Yet to face its first audience, Bloody Tennis has already begun its international distribution journey ahead of the Locarno Film Festival.

According to a special report by Variety, Shudder has acquired the US rights to the horror film directed in English by Nikias Chryssos. Umbrella Entertainment in Australia, Plaion Pictures in Italy, Extreme Film in Japan, 9th Plan in Poland, Njuta Films in Scandinavia, and BestFilm in the Baltic countries have also made deals.

The film will have its world premiere in the non-competitive Fuori Concorso section of the 79th Locarno Film Festival on August 7.

Success at the tennis academy turns into a deadly competition

Bloody Tennis follows Sophie, who is accepted into an elite tennis academy operating away from the public eye in southern Europe.

The young athlete faces not only the ruthlessness of her competitors but also the increasingly dark regime of the school. In an academy where competition reaches its ultimate limit, talent alone is not enough; one must transform into the person the system demands to survive.

The film combines the pressure to win in professional sports with a supernatural fear of bodily transformation. Promotional materials highlight blood-sucking leeches, physical metamorphosis, and harsh training methods that pit students against each other.

Sophie is played by Sandra Guldberg Kampp. The cast also includes Helena Zengel, Tracy Gotoas, Lucie Zhang, Lily Taïeb, Elina Löwensohn, and Zlatko Burić, known for Triangle of Sadness.

The Shudder deal eases the film's first test

The fact that Bloody Tennis secured a sale before its festival screening shows that distributors are not solely relying on reviews from Locarno. By entering Shudder's US catalog, which focuses particularly on horror content, the film has already established its presence in one of the most significant markets.

However, the Shudder deal does not cover worldwide distribution rights. Sales outside the US are being handled by different companies, while negotiations for remaining open regions are ongoing with The Playmaker. The Australian deal was made directly through Augenschein Sales, while other sales in Europe and Asia were conducted via The Playmaker.

The distribution in Germany will be handled by Port au Prince, one of the film's co-producers. There is currently no distribution or broadcasting agreement announced for Turkey.

Nikias Chryssos's first English-language film

Bloody Tennis is the first feature film directed in English by German-Greek director Nikias Chryssos.

Chryssos previously worked on closed communities, power dynamics, and disturbing family structures with films like Der Bunker, which was screened at the Berlin Film Festival, and A Pure Place, which won a directing award at the Munich Film Festival. In his new film, he shifts this focus to the elite sports environment.

The film is produced by Jonas Katzenstein and Maximilian Leo on behalf of Augenschein Filmproduktion. Port au Prince Film & Kultur Produktion and ZDF are among the co-producers. Filming took place on the island of Gran Canaria in Spain and in Cologne, Germany.

The music is composed by Jim Williams, known for Titane, Raw, and Possessor.

Locarno could boost the film's sales momentum

The pre-premiere sales of Bloody Tennis across different continents indicate that the production will not start its festival journey with an empty distribution file. The feedback from the screening in Locarno will now determine not whether the film can find its first buyer, but how much it can grow in the remaining markets.

The film, which turns elite sports into a bloody survival game, has already received its first commercial response. The next test will be whether the potential seen by international distributors resonates with the audience in Locarno.