Aura Entertainment has acquired US rights to Flint, Ryan Whitaker’s Western adapted from Louis L’Amour’s novel and starring Josh Holloway, and plans to release it in cinemas in spring 2027, Deadline reported on 12 November. The deal was struck during the American Film Market in Los Angeles. No price was disclosed.
It came together fast. Capture, which handles the rest of the world, only took the film on for international sales on 5 November. And buyer and seller are close relations: Aura and Capture are both built on Signature Entertainment and Capstone, so the US release stays inside one circle of partners while Capture sells everywhere else.
Key facts
- Buyer: Aura Entertainment; territory: United States; release: in cinemas, spring 2027; terms not disclosed
- Film: Flint, written and directed by Ryan Whitaker from Louis L’Amour’s novel; stars Josh Holloway, Sarah Gadon, Max Martini and Dianna Agron
- World premiere: 57th Nashville Film Festival, September 2026
- International sales: Capture, the joint venture of Signature Entertainment and Capstone Studios, which boarded the film on 5 November
- Aura is a partnership of Capstone, Signature Entertainment and Ascending Media, according to its founders
The film
Holloway, known to television audiences from Yellowstone, plays James Kettleman, a ruthless East Coast businessman who returns to the Montana frontier he once fled and takes the name of the gunfighter who raised him. Pulled into a range war alongside a rancher, he has to settle accounts with his past. Mike Vogel, Charles Esten, Forrie J. Smith, Bailey Chase, Nick Searcy and Kristoffer Polaha complete the ensemble.
Ken Carpenter of Tirian Films produced with Jerilyn Esquibel, Holloway, Ari Novak and Beau L’Amour, the novelist’s son. Mark Pentecost was executive producer through The Pentecost Group. Whitaker’s previous feature was Surprised by Oxford.
Marc Goldberg negotiated for Aura; UTA Independent Film Group and the lawyer Sam Curphey acted for the filmmakers. Goldberg called Flint a Western “made for the big screen”, and Whitaker said a cinema release was the format he had always had in mind. When Capture boarded the film, its executive vice-president Ella Field tied the timing to the renewed appetite for Westerns that series such as Yellowstone have fed.
Who is buying
Goldberg, Christian Mercuri and Jared Goetz launched Aura as a US distributor in 2025. As they told The Hollywood Reporter in September, it is a partnership between Mercuri’s sales, finance and production company Capstone, Goldberg’s UK distributor Signature Entertainment and Goetz’s digital distribution firm Ascending Media, and each founder still runs his own business. Capture, for its part, is the international sales joint venture of Signature and Capstone Studios, as Deadline noted on 5 November.
Aura’s model is commercial, mid-budget films that can play in cinemas and still earn back their cost on digital platforms. Goldberg told THR the company aims to release 12 to 15 films a year. Its slate includes Renny Harlin’s action film The Beast, with Samuel L. Jackson and Joel Kinnaman, which opened in US cinemas on 9 October, and Dario Russo’s Australian dark comedy The Fox, which Aura opens on 4 December, Deadline reported in September. The founders’ calling card is Obsession: the founders brought the horror film to Toronto in 2025, where it sold to Focus Features for $15m worldwide, and THR put its global box office at $512m in mid-September.
Flint adds a Western to a busy AFM for independent buyers. This week FilmBunch has reported Cohen Media Group’s reported US deal for Woman Unknown, Amazon MGM’s reported territory buys on Russell Crowe’s Bluefly and the launch of Attend, a marketplace for booking independent films into US cinemas.
The screen count, the exact release date and the film’s streaming home after cinemas have not been announced, and Capture has not yet announced any international sales.
Our reading
For the producers, a US cinema release secured a week after Capture boarded the film matters more than the undisclosed price. Capture can now show buyers elsewhere a committed American release, which many want to see before they commit themselves.
The shared ownership cuts both ways. It explains the speed: Aura was buying a film its own partners already represent. It also makes the deal weaker evidence of open-market demand than a sale to an unrelated buyer would be. The proof will come in spring 2027: how many screens Aura books, and how many territories Capture has closed by then.
Sources
- Deadline, Aura Entertainment takes US rights to Flint (12 November 2026)
- Deadline, Capture boards sales on Josh Holloway-led Western Flint (5 November 2026)
- Capture, Flint title page
- The Hollywood Reporter, Why Aura Entertainment isn’t obsessed with topping Obsession (16 September 2026)
- Unified Pictures, The Beast release page (in US cinemas 9 October 2026)
- Deadline, Dario Russo’s The Fox acquired by Aura Entertainment for theatres (September 2026)