Brian Cook's Euros 8.5m satirical comedy Colour Me Kubrick will be the first project for Studio Hamburg Produktion's English-language division Studio Hamburg International Production (SHIP) which was launched shortly before this year's Cannes Film Festival.

The screenplay by Kubrick's long-time personal assistant Anthony Frewin centres on the true story of a man in London who pretended to be the legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick during the shoot of Eyes Wide Shut, thereby financing a lavish lifestyle for himself.

John Malkovich is attached to play the confidence trickster for director Cook, a long-time assistant director of Kubrick. Michael Fitzgerald (The Pledge) will produce and SHIP's Stuart Pollok and Sytze van der Laan executive produce this European co-production which will shoot in London, Hamburg, Bremen and Amsterdam this autumn.

The production, whose international sales will be handled by Capitol Sales, will make use of the UK sales and leaseback programme and has already received Euros 900,000 from Hamburg's local public fund FilmFoerderung Hamburg in its latest round of funding. (At the end of last year Colour Me Kubrick had been mentioned as a possible project in the portfolio of Studio Hamburg's in-house media fund Studio Hamburg WorldWide Pictures).