Matador Pictures announces six film slate

Matador Pictures has announced a six film slate.

The news comes after the split of the production and financing activities of the company in November 2012, with Gloucester Place Films launched as a subsidiary to manage film financing [click here for story].

Matador’s slate includes two features written by Paul Gerstenberger, who recently wrote Vertigo’s StreetDance spinoff All Stars.

Plague of the Undead is an action film that was co-written with Orlando Cubitt and is set in the dark ages, while Zafari is a co-production with Nick Gillot and takes place in a zombie safari resort where guests pay money to shoot the undead.

Speaking to ScreenDaily, Matador founder and CEO Nigel Thomas said he expected those two to go into production in late 2013.

“We’re excited to be working with some very talented writers and directors and these films have cracking scripts so are highly financeable and very castable” commented Thomas.

Matador producer Charlotte Walls added: “[Plague of the Undead] is exciting because it’s based on an internal development story idea, so we were really on that from inception.”

The slate is rounded off by two book adaptations – Marsha Mehran’s feel good comedy drama Pomegranate Soup, with Kirsten Sheridan in talks to write and direct, and Jonathan Trigell’s sci-fi thriller Genus, with Mike Carey attached to write the screenplay – and co-productions with Tiger Aspect (Eaten, from a story by Matthew Read and Will Gould) and Western Edge Pictures (A Visit to America, written by award-winning novelist Owen Sheers).

Gloucester Place Films will co-finance “where it makes sense” according to Thomas, who noted that the focus is on “market-led, commercial and very financeable” projects. Walls noted that the diversity of the slate will aid in the projects’ development.

“The relationship with Gloucester Place Films is very helpful when you’re developing material because not only are you analysing material for an investment opportunity yourself on the Gloucester Place side, but we’re also tapped into other financing opportunities out there at any given moment so definitely on the development side, we’re developing for production,” explained Walls.

As for future plans after this slate, Thomas stated that there are already projects in place, with a variety of budgets, including a “well-known property”.

“Our aim is to continue to do somewhere between six to eight films a year, of which over half will be internally developed productions.”