I heard from Southland Tales director Richard Kelly, his friend-producer Sean McKittrick and another producer, Persistent Entertainment’s Matthew Rhodes, earlier today about Sony having acquired Tales for theatrical and home video distribution. No one’s saying which theatrical distrib branch — Columbia, Screen Gems, Sony Classics — will put it out there, but it would be really weird if it was Screen Gems. The first piece of news I learned is that Tales will most likely come out sometime in early ’07, and also that a showing at September’s Toronto Film Festival isn’t necessarily in the cards. Kelly and his editor are “re-ordering” some scenes, cutting some others, re-writing and re-recording some voice-over with Justin Timberlake, and then finishing a bunch of visual effecfts shots that weren’t done in time for Cannes. The finished cut will clock in around 10 minutes shorter, give or take, and Kelly expects to show it to Sony honchos in a few weeks time. Release-wise “we have heard rumblings of January,” said Kelly, “which might be cool since it is sort of a wasteland time for other movies and our movie would have room to be discovered as a wild card, and the graphic novels will have more time to be digested and read by fans, so I’m game. It just feels good to have the biggest movie studio in the world behind me…never had that before.” And by the way, the first Southland Tales Two Roads Diverge” — is being toasted at ViewAskew’s Westwood store called Secret Stash on July 6th.