All Finance articles – Page 326

  • News

    IFC shuts down micro-budget production arm

    2002-08-22T00:00:00Z

    IFCEntertainment announced that its low-budget Los Angeles-based production armNext Wave Films is to immediately cease operations as a separate divisionwithin the company. The closureprompted a warning from outgoing Next Wave president Peter Broderick, who saidthere was a "crisis" in independent film distribution that wasstopping most independents from reaching their target ...

  • News

    Revolution renames Lopez, Fiennes romance

    2002-08-21T00:00:00Z

    RevolutionStudios has changed the name of its romantic comedy The Chambermaid, starring Jennifer Lopez and RalphFiennes, to Maid In Manhattan. The picture wasco-produced by Shoelace Productions and directed by Wayne Wang, whose previouscredits include Smokeand The Joy Luck Club.Lopez plays amaid in a first class Manhattan hotel who is mistaken ...

  • News

    Diageo finances African feature

    2002-08-19T04:05:00Z

    Brewing giant Diageo is attempting to cash-in on the widespread popularity of Michael Powell, a fictional journalist and star of its recent pan-African TV campaign for Guinness, by financing a $3m (£2m) feature film based around the character.The action thriller, which has just started principal photography on the outskirts of ...

  • News

    Powerhouse, Steeple pact on The Sailmaker

    2002-08-19T00:00:00Z

    PowerHouse Studios has signed a deal with Steeple Distributions to co-produce two feature films in association with Arama/Zegna Pictures. Steeple will provide funding for the two projects via a $132m letter of credit issued by the Bank of New York.The first co-production will be Shimon Arama's The Sailmaker. To be ...

  • News

    Swiss film industry gets $33.3m production support

    2002-08-09T04:05:00Z

    The Swiss film industry will receive $33.3m (CHF 50.4m) production support over the next three years with the signing of a third expanded Audiovisual Pact between public broadcaster SRG SSR idee suisse and the Swiss film industry in Locarno this week.The new pact will see SRG SSR providing a ...

  • News

    Distinguished Features to shoot Dead Bodies, premiere Puckoon

    2002-08-08T04:05:00Z

    Dead Bodies, the debut feature from young Irish company Distinguished Features and director Robert Quinn, will start principal photography in and around Dublin on September 1.The film will be the first project to avail of the Irish Film Board's Low Budget Feature Initiative, announced at the Galway Film Fleadh in ...

  • News

    Columbia TriStar snaps up rights to Japanese sci-fi Returner

    2002-08-06T04:05:00Z

    Columbia Tristar Motion Picture Group has bought worldwide rights, outside Asia, to Returner, a sci-fi thriller expected to be one of the big Japanese films of the year.Although Hollywood has taken a greater interest in Japan in recent years, the purchase by a major studio of worlwide rights to a ...

  • News

    Japan banks on period dramas to woo international market

    2002-08-02T04:05:00Z

    Japan is targeting the international market that swooned over Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with at least seven new youth-oriented period dramas in various stages of production.Following 1999's boardroom coup, Shochiku's new management team, led by Nobuyoshi Otani, has dramatically beefed up the company's slate and is now investing $35m to ...

  • News

    NYC's No Borders co-production market unveils full line-up

    2002-08-01T00:00:00Z

    A total of 36 projectshave been accepted into No Borders, the international co-production section ofthe IFP Market that will run from Sept 27-Oct 4 in downtown Manhattan. In additionto the 13 previously-announced international entrants, No Borders will includenew works from US indie veterans Jay Craven and Barbara Hammer, the firstdocumentary ...

  • News

    Walden Media secures Peacock to pen first Lewis outing

    2002-07-28T00:00:00Z

    Emmy Award winning writer Ann Peacock has signed on to pen Walden Media's forthcoming adaptation of C S Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Peacock, who won an Emmy for her adaptation of Ernest J. Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying for HBO, will write the screenplay for the ...

  • News

    Luther biopic follows El Crimen Del Padre Amaro in wide release pattern

    2002-07-26T04:05:00Z

    Following the news that Mexico's El Crimen Del Padre Amaro, about a priest's affair with a young woman, is to get the country's biggest ever national release; now a $20m German/US co-production plans to get the story of Martin Luther and his relationship with a former nun on to 1,200 ...

  • News

    Media Asia Films takes four films from start-up Base Production

    2002-07-24T04:05:00Z

    Hong Kong's Media Asia Films has signed a four-picture deal with start-up production outfit Base Production, headed by Hong Kong director Andrew Lau.The first picture under the two-year deal will be $5.1m (HK$40m) thriller, I Want To Be You, set to star four previous winners of the Best Actor award ...

  • News

    Fox 2000 takes remake rights to Denmark's Catch That Girl

    2002-07-24T04:05:00Z

    Denmark's Nimbus Film has sold English-language remake rights on its children's film Catch That Girl (Klatretosen) to Fox 2000.The Hans Fabian Wullenveber-directed film, which appeared in the Kinderfest arm of this year's Berlin Festival, is the story of a 13 year-old girl who robs a bank in order to save ...

  • News

    Emmy winner from last year to direct first feature

    2002-07-23T04:05:00Z

    As bets start being placed on which of the finalists will win Emmy Awards this year, one of last year's winners, the acclaimed theatre director Gale Edwards, has signed up to direct her first feature, The Dressmaker. Set in the in 1950s, The Dressmaker is about a woman who has ...

  • News

    Denmark's Nimbus picks up rights to classic French novel

    2002-07-23T00:00:00Z

    Danish production group Nimbus has bought the film rights to French classic novel Maldonne. A romantic thriller, Maldonne is the story of a down on his luck businessman who poses as a richer man in order to secure an inheritance and win over a beautiful woman. It was written in ...

  • News

    Macquarie Film Corp. - from Dirty Deeds to Wannabes

    2002-07-22T00:00:00Z

    At the same time as Australia's Macquarie Film Corp. was celebrating the successful weekend opening of its first backed film Dirty Deeds; it was also announcing the eighth and final film to be backed under its current scheme: The Wannabes.Dirty Deeds, the first film to benefit from Macquarie's interest in ...

  • News

    Australian actors are getting behind the camera

    2002-07-19T04:05:00Z

    Russell Crowe's mooted directorial debut, The Long Green Shore, is just one example of a host of Australian actors currently getting behind the camera with projects to direct or produce.Toni Collette is in the process of producing an adaptation of Luke Davis's novel Isabelle The Navigator alongside Icon Shanahan Productions' ...

  • News

    Hunter tracks down Harper for Prey

    2002-07-18T04:05:00Z

    UK director Simon Hunter, whose debut film Lighthouse opens in London this week as an unusual double bill with horror classic Evil Dead, has teamed with producer Sara Harper on his next project, heist movie Prey.Prey, which Hunter also wrote, follows a group of criminals who kidnap a murderer by ...

  • News

    Two Australian production companies established

    2002-07-18T04:05:00Z

    Two Australian companies, leading TV commercials producer Film Graphics and top visual effects outfit Animal Logic have simultaneously, but separately, launched into feature film and television programme production.And while each company's methods are different - Australian Rules producer Mark Lazarus has been appointed executive producer and head of development for ...

  • News

    US productions running away to Australia, says new research

    2002-07-18T04:05:00Z

    Australia is the first choice when shooting abroad for 60% of Los Angeles-based film and television producers that have worked there, according to a new survey released this week. "Australia is seen as more competitive than Canada because of the exchange rate and the climate," the survey states, "and more ...