Generator Entertainment is kicking off with a new slate of five genre films - with budgets of about $3m each - starting with Paddy Breathnach's new supernatural thriller Red Mist, which started shooting for 24 days in Belfast on Monday. The project marks Breathnach's follow-up to Shrooms.

Arielle Kebbel (The Grudge 2), Sarah Carter and Stephen Dillane (The Hours) star in the story of a coma patient given a drug cocktail that gives him murderous supernatural powers. Stephen Wright wrote the script.

Mark Huffam is producing for Generator with Michael Kelly for Geronimo. Delivery is scheduled for November 2008.

Generator, being founded by Huffam (Mamma Mia!, The Hours), Simon Bosanquet (Ripley's Game) and ex-Universal and ex-Paramount executive Thomas Thorstensson, has raised funding for its initial slate of five films, all to be shot in 2008, from Limelight, Framestore Features, and select project funding from Northern Ireland Screen.

Sales outfit The Little Film Company is handling worldwide sales on all five, which have been pre-sold for the US to Starz Entertainment.

Generator is also working with US-based Bottled Lightning on Terry Loane's Vanilla Gorilla, a family film starring Pierce Brosnan to shoot in Africa in March. The outfit is co-producing, with Canada's Brightlight, Peter Howitt's David Copperfield to star Rowan Atkinson and Hayden Christansen and being readied for an April shoot (Velvet Octopus is selling).

'The idea is that we're filmmakers and we're not going to stop making larger-budget films,' Huffam said. 'We want to run this slate alongside more conventional larger budget movies projects.'

The other three films on the low-budget slate to be shot in Northern Ireland are Chris Hartwill's ghost story The God Machine written by Sven Hughes, urban gang thriller Beach Boys written by Malachi Smyth, and sinister love story Chatakwa Falls written by Richard Crawford.

The fifth title, Abe Forsythe's horror mockumentary Video 8, will shoot in Australia starting in March for Jodi Matterson's Wild Eddie Films.

All five are planned for shoots in 2008.

'We haven't reinvented the wheel here, but we want to make low-budget films at a price that wouldn't hurt the quality but make them more commercially viable. We'll own the films and build our own library,' Bosanquet told ScreenDaily.com.

Huffam said that the combined experience of the founders brings something new to low-budget film-making. 'I think one of the advantages that we have is our experience on larger-budget films and there are a lot of relationships built. We're using those contacts,' Huffam said.

Bosanquet added: 'That's also why we've teamed up with Framestore Features - to give the films a look and a polish that these low budget films don't usually get the chance to achieve.'

Bosanquet said Robbie Little was ideal to represent the slate. 'We brought him on board early. He has a good track record of selling this type of film and knows who has an appetite for it.'

Topics