Netflix Close on U.S. Deal for The Black Ball With Penelope Cruz

Netflix is set to acquire Cannes Film Festival competition title The Black Ball (La Bola Negra), featuring Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close in supporting roles, for the U.S., according to sources.

The Spanish-language movie, directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, a creative duo and former couple known in their native country as Los Javis, world premiered at Cannes on Thursday evening to a thunderous, lengthy standing ovation.

La Bola Negra is the creative duo’s first feature since 2017’s Holy Camp!  The queer epic tells the story of three men in three different periods — 1932, 1937 and 2017 — connected by the last works of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.

Elastica will release the film in Spain in October, with co-producer Le Pacte handling the theatrical release in France. 

Netflix has yet to officially confirm the deal. The film’s Spanish producers, Movistar Plus, told The Hollywood Reporter negotiations were still ongoing.

The Black Ball premiered to a rapturous reception in Cannes this week, and a 20-minute standing ovation, the longest of the fest. Critics were similarly enthusiastic. In his Hollywood Reporter review, Richard Lawson, calling the film “a consideration of so much lost gay history,” praised the directors’ “dazzling mix of contemporary pop sensibility and classical filmmaking….[executing] this mighty vision with thrilling technical bravado.” Lawson noted that one “comes to festivals like Cannes partly to witness the arrival of major new filmmakers, and The Black Ball is just such an event.”