Moving aggressively, Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisition Group has acquired all available foreign territory rights to Focus Features’ adventure thriller “Hanna,” from director Joe Wright.

Deal throws the weight of a studio behind “Hanna” in many international territories.

Focus — Universal’s specialty division — will retain distribution rights to “Hanna” in the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Israel, Middle East and CIS. Sony Pictures Entertainment will release the film everywhere else.

Pact was engineered by Alison Thompson’s Focus Features Intl., which was shopping the project to foreign buyers at Cannes, and marks the biggest deal of the market so far. It also pairs a U.S. major with a U.S. studio specialty division.

“Hanna,” starring Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana, is in its final month of filming in Europe and will be released in 2011. Project reteams Wright and Ronan, who worked together on Focus’ “Atonement.” Universal distributed “Atonement” internationally.

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