Delgo Distributor Going Legit With Bill Nighy/Emily Blunt/Rupert Grint Odd-Trio Comedy

Hey-ohhh, the economy is back! For evidence, look no further than the offices of Freestyle Releasing, whose responsibility for laying the single biggest wide-release egg in history is but a distant memory today: The organization will turn over a new leaf with some slightly more (OK, much more) esteemed company.

Freestyle announced Monday that it would start a new institutional chapter with the comedy Wild Target, starring Bill Nighy as aging assassin drawn unusually close to one of his intended victims (Emily Blunt). Co-starring Rupert Grint, Rupert Everett and Martin Freeman, it's the 6-year-old distributor's first actual acquisition for theatrical release. Past efforts as a distributor-for-hire have yielded a curious spectrum of quasi-horror middlers (An American Haunting, The Haunting of Molly Hartley), blink-and-you'll-miss-them indies (Bottle Shock, Me and Orson Welles), and of course the biggest opening-weekend flop in the history of modern cinema -- the animated, $237-per-screen-averaging Delgo.

According to Freestyle's bosses, their Wild Target move is the first of many that will establish it as a regular buyer in the marketplace -- news about which indie producers and sales agents this morning are likely sobbing into their coffee with joy. They needed it. We all needed it. You can't just rely on Harvey Weinstein for all the risk in times as tough as these.

And... there's a trailer:

· Freestyle inks U.S. rights to Wild Target [THR]