German production and financing outfits Checkpoint Berlin Filmproductions and Cinemedia Film have teamed with local distributor Senator Films to produce a slate of unashamed B-movies under the label Planet B.

Checkpoint and Cinemedia aim to produce four low-budget films under the strand, with Senator taking German rights. All will four be love-stories with a twist: Thomas Frick's Inspector Lovelorn, for example, is a film-noirish project about a private detective who turns into a woman every time he gets emotional. He thus falls in love with the villains he later disposes off.

Checkpoint chief executive officer Daniel C Witte likened the series to the spirit of Roger Corman's films, shooting at a breakneck pace for very little money. All four projects have 20-day shooting schedules and are going to be completely filmed in the Babelsberg studios. The combined budget for all four films is $3.4m; shooting is going to start by the end of August and will be back-to-back.

Christoph Gampl's The Antman is first to go, followed by Andre Hennicke's C.I. Angel, Peter Keglevich's Mask Under Masks and Frick's Detective Lovelorn. Additional backing comes from the German Filmboard.