Darclight, the specialist division of increasinglysuccessful sales and financing outfit Arclight, has committed to produce atleast two genre films per year in its native Australia.

The commitment came hard on the heels of the sale byArclight of Wolf Creek, a horrorthriller that is currently in production, to Optimum Releasing of the UK.

Written and directed by Greg McLean, the film is the storyof three backpackers who accept help from a seemingly helpful local when theybecome lost in the Outback.

"Our plans for a slate of genre movies is just the beginning. We want to find the nextGeorge Miller, Spierig brothers or James Wan and to go on and develop biggerbudget movies with them," said Arclight managing director Gary Hamilton.

Arclight head of development John Kim will be co-ordinatingscript submissions.

Hamilton argues that "there's a rich precedent ofcreative energy flourishing within the constraints of genre material, materialwhich understands the commercial dictates of the marketplace", but saysthat, unlike Peter Jackson's New Zealand, genre films have largely been ignoredby Australia's public funding bodies.

Arclight also boosted its MIFED account with multiple salesof The Librarian, a star studded TVmovie that is new to its slate. The Dean Devlin-produced film, whichstars Noah Wyle, Kyle McLachlan, Kelly Hu and Olympia Dukakis is handled by TNTin the US and Warner Bros for US home entertainment, was sold to Nordisk forScandinavia, TF1 for France and RTL for Germany.

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