Saul Metzstein (Late Night Shopping) is to direct Cassandra At The Wedding for Film andMusic Entertainment (FAME), the prolific UK-based production outfit run by SamTaylor and Mike Downey. Written by Peter MIlligan, Cassandra is a comedy about two identical female twins whosepersonalities are very different.

This will be Metzstein'ssecond film with FAME following M*A*S*H-styleblack comedy, Guy X, starring JasonBiggs and Natscha McElhone, which is nearing completion and will be ready nextyear. (The Works is handling international sales.)

Earlier this week,shooting began in Vienna on another new FAME project, Simon Aeby's The Henchman, a co-production withSwitzerland's T&C Film, Luxembourg's Samsa, Germany's Home Run Pictures andHungary's Euro Films. Set in the 16th Century and billed as "a medievalmorality story," the film stars Nikolai Coster-Waldau and Steven Berkoff.

Meanwhile, confirmingits appetite for upscale literary material, FAME is hatching a batch offeatures based on well-known books. It is a co-producing partner on RobertGlynski's Gunter Grass adaptation, CallOf The Toad (currently shooting.) It is also developing Victim Of The Aurora, an adaptation ofThomas Keneally's novel about a murder during an expedition to the South Polein 1909. Steve Attridge (Guy X) iswriting the screenplay.

FAME has also nowcompleted the fund raising for Shotgun Pictures, a collaboration with ThomasHaeberle and Torsten Poeck of Clou Partners, which is soliciting submissionsfor its first series of 10 low budget feature films. This Euros 5m fund willfill in the gap for genre films, pet projects by leading directors and willfully finance each picture with no other financiers on board. It has agreen-light board consisting of Sam Taylor, Mike Downey, Peter Rommel, KeithRotman, and Torsten Poeck.

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