Corsan on board for Silence

Corsan will provide Belgian tax shelter financing for Scorsese’s film.

Breuls said that Corsan “will take an equity position in the film” and will act as a coproducer.

“It’s a wonderful project. I loved the material. It’s not easy…the film has been around for a while but it is completely up our alley.”

Breuls suggested that Scorsese’s picture is in tune with “the wonderfully creative, often difficult films commercially” that Corsan strives to back.

Corsan will provide around 25% of the budget on the project, which is being made through Emmett/Furla.

Here in Cannes, Corsan’s sales arm is hawking Lee Tamahori’s 16^th Century drama Emperor, which is in pre-production and is now fully financed.

Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis is in Cannes this weekend to help Corsan with the sales drive on his new feature Third Person, which recently completed shooting in Cinecitta in Rome. The film, starring Liam Neeson and Mila Kunis, should be ready for August.

Breuls confirmed that Corsan has finally completed its very long-gestating Roland Joffe epic Singularity and aims to launch the film at an autumn festival.

“It’s in the can,” Breuls said of the film, a drama streching from the Great Barrier Reef in 2010 to India in the eighteenth century.

A new film on Corsan’s development slate is Confessions Of An Economic Hitman. This is an adaptation of the book by John Perkins and is touted as “the shocking story of how America took over the world.”

It explores how US economists convinced underdeveloped countries to accept huge loans for infrastructure development projects. This effectively meant that the projects were contracted to multinational corporations. The countries acquired enormous debt, and the US was thereby given huge influence over their economies. Corsan bought the rights three months ago and the $25 million film is due to shoot early next year.