In a highly competitive situation, Sony Pictures has acquired North American rights to Toronto International Film Festival breakout “The Surgeon,” the studio announced Thursday.
The thriller from Thunder Road and Tango is directed by Roshan Sethi, M.D. and stars Michelle Yeoh, Martin Freeman, Laurie Davidson, Yuri Kolokolnikov, and Joseph Mydell.
The studio has also acquired rights in Latin America, Italy, China and Hong Kong.
“The Surgeon” is produced by Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, and Diarmaid McGrath of Thunder Road, Tango’s Tim Headington, Lia Buman, Neil Shah, Steve Klinsky, Adam Kolbrenner of Lit Entertainment Group, John Schoenfelder, and Russell Ackerman. Theresa Page, Kim Szarzynski, Yeoh, 193’s Patrick Wachsberger and Ashley Stern, Mahal Sourgose, Eric Harbert, Jay Schuminsky, Patrick White, David Martin, Macdara Kelleher, Eoin Egan, Cáit Collins, and Andrew Schwartzberg serve as executive producers.
On top of Sethi’s successful previous projects (“A Nice Indian Boy” and “The Resident”), he is also a practicing radiation oncologist at a Boston hospital.
“The Surgeon” stars Yeoh as an expert surgeon who is abducted and forced to operate on a mysterious patient, only to turn 35 years of surgical expertise against her captors and outwit them in a fight for survival.
Sethi turned to his colleague Dr. O’Keefe, a surgeon at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, where the movie was shot, to train and prepare Yeoh. Dr. O’Keefe is also a teacher who runs the Royal College of Surgeons simulator lab.
“She ran Michelle through everything, like how to scrub in, how to operate, how to do the knots, everything,” Sethi told Jada Yuan at TheWrap’s studio at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival.
Yeoh took her training quite seriously because she wanted the surgical movements to come off as authentic as possible on the big screen.
“It was really important for me, so that when I did the movements and all that, it looked real,” Yeoh said.
The deal was negotiated by WME on behalf of the filmmakers. 193, a Legendary company, handled international sales rights. The deal was negotiated on behalf of the studio by Joe Matukewicz, President, Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions, Virginia Longmuir, EVP Business Affairs, and Elan Kovo, VP Business Development & FP&A. Sethi is represented by CAA and Lit Entertainment Group.
