DCM assumes sole ownership of Delphi Filmverleih

Berlin-based DCM Productions is to become sole owner of the distribution company Delphi Filmverleih after acquiring a 50% stake at the start of 2011 as a strategic partner in order to avert Delphi’s pending insolvency at the time.

DCM has acquired the other 50% interest from Delphi Filmverleih’s founder Claus Boje, who for the past 12 months has served as a shareholder and co-managing director alongside DCM’s Dario Suter [pictured].

Suter will now continue to serve as managing director for the distribution outfit, which will be renamed DCM from the start of February and already has two major releases lined up for later in 2012.

They are Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg’s Kon-Tiki, about the famous expedition of the legendary Norwegian scientist and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, and veteran actor Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut Quartet starring Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins. Both films have also been co-produced by DCM.

Meanwhile, three releases scheduled for the start of this year are still being handled under the old Delphi Filmverleih name. This was the case with Christian Ulmen’s comedy Jonas, which had its world premiere at last year’s Zurich Film Festival and opened in German cinemas last week (Jan 5). The arrangement will also apply to the much-lauded French film The Artist (German release: Jan 26) and Christophe Barratier’s remake of The War Of The Buttons (German release: Mar 29).

The old company name of Delphi Filmverleih will revert to Boje on Apr 1 once the renaming process has been completed.

Boje, who founded Delphi Filmverleih in 1989 and became a partner with film director Detlev Buck in the production company Boje Buck Produktion, will concentrate in future on his own projects.

Boje and Buck are currently working on an €11m 3D adaptation of Daniel Kehlmann’s bestselling novel Measuring The World, which re-imagines the lives of the 19th German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and German geographer Alexander von Humboldt and their many groundbreaking ways of measuring the world.

The co-production with Austria’s Lotus Film received backing from German regional and national funds Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, MDM, FFF Bayern, DFFF, FFA, and BKM as well as the Austrian Film Institute, the Vienna Film Fund and the Austrian incentive programme FISA.

The cast includes Florian David Fitz and Albrecht Abraham Schuch in the lead roles of Gauss and von Humboldt, along with Jeremy Kapone, Katharina Thalbach, Karl Markovics, and David Kross.

Principal photography for Measuring The World - which relocates to Ecuador this month – is scheduled to wrap in early February.