Paramount Germany unveils first local pickup, German funds pay out over €10m in support

Feature debutant Tim Fehlmann’s post-apocalyptic thriller 2016 – Das Ende der Nacht has been unveiled as Paramount Pictures Germany’s first local pickup.

The project, which has begun shooting in Bavaria, Brandenburg and on Corsica, is being produced by Thomas Wöbke and Gabriele M. Walther of Munich-based Caligari Film as a co-production with Switzerland’s Vega Film and broadcaster ProSiebenSAT.1’s film production arm SevenPictures Film. Roland Emmerich, who is currently shooting his Shakespeare whodunit Anonymous at the Babelsberg Studios, is serving as executive producer.

The leads in the story of the struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic world are Hannah Herzsprung (The Reader), Lars Eidinger (Eveyrone Else), Stipe Erceg (Unknown White Male) and Angela Winkler (The Tin Drum).

Producer Wöbke points out that Swiss-born Fehlbaum, who came to wider attention with his Shocking Short Award 2004 winner For Julian, is “a director who manages to create suspense through plain realism rather than big special effects.”

2016 – Das Ende der Nacht attracted €300,000 in funding from both Bavaria’s FFF Bayern and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, €250,000 from the German Federal Film Board (FFA), €40,000 from Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film and Swiss Francs/CHF 300,000 from the Zurich Film Foundation. It will be distributed by Paramount, who began operations in Germany from January 2009, in spring 2011.

Meanwhile, new films by Lars Trier, Franziska Buch, Christian Zübert, and Rani Massalha are among more than 50 projects awarded over €10m at this week’s funding sessions by two German regional film funds, Filmstiftung NRW and FFF Bayern.

Filmstiftung NRW allocated € 145,000 to von Trier’s Melancholia which will be produced by Cologne-based Zentropa International with Danish, French and Swedish partners and will star Charlotte Gainsbourg, Charlotte Rampling, Kiefer Sutherland and Stellan Skarsgard.

Golden Bear winner Heimatfilm (Bal) received €250,000 from NRW for its German-French co-production with MACT Productions of debutant Rani Massalha’s Giraffada about a father’s attempt to smuggle a giraffe across the Israeli-Palestinian border, while Sönke Wortmann’s Little Shark Entertainment picked up over €1.2m for Isabel Kleefeld’s Ruhm based on Daniel Kehlmann’s bestseller, starring Senta Berger and Heino Ferch.

At the same time, the Bavarian fund, for example, paid out €800,000 to blue eyes fiction’s production of Franziska Buch’s children’s film Yoko, which will be released theatrically in Germany by Sony Pictures, and €500,000 for Christian Zübert’s culture clash comedy Dreiviertelmond by Uli Aselmann’s d.i.e. film.

Both funds also allocated production or development support for a number of local live-action or animated 3D projects now in preparation. This ranged from € 1.9m for Wickie auf grosser Fahrt, Christian Ditter’s 3D  sequel to last year’s number one film Vicky The Viking, through € 900,000 for the brother animators Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein’s German-Danish co-production Marnie’s World, to € 650,000 for Boris Aljinovic and Michael Coldewey’s 3D-animated 7 Dwarfs sequel, 7 Zwerge – Der 7bte Zwerg.

In addition, pre-production support was granted to Cologne-based Coin Film and Daywalker Studios for the preparation of their project Kickermännchen Jojo which plans to feature animated and 3D effects.