A very significant deal was announced today that gives director George Miller access to significant finance and the digital technology and hardware, personnel, and management skills, enabling him to make more films of the scale of his most recent hit, Happy Feet.

His company, Kennedy Miller Mitchell, has joined forces with Omnilab Media, which is owned by the wealthy Mapp family and is the largest supplier of facilities and services to Australia's film industry.

'It is a joint venture to create a digital production house that will produce all sorts of digital media, with the flagships being films that utilise a lot of digital effects just as Beowulf, Avatar and Tintin do,' said George Miller today.

'We wanted to team up with someone that already had a lot of capacity and we have lots and lots of projects we want to do,' he said.

A sequel to Happy Feet is likely to be one of the first productions. The superhero film referred to as Justice League of America but certain to get a name change, is also likely to be done under the umbrella of the new as yet unnamed company.

'We grew a very big talent pool on Happy Feet and the moment the film finished there was nowhere for all those people to go and we lost the cream overseas,' said Miller, who hopes that this new venture will help address this brain drain. Miller looks to the industry that has been built around Peter Jackson in New Zealand as one of his inspiration.

The deal has been under negotiation since early in the year and represents a reunion of old friends: patriarch Graham Mapp has known Miller since the 1980s. But it was his son, Omnilab Media managing director Christopher Mapp, that drove the deal.

'We have been on a journey for the last nine years that aims to vertically integrate the art of storytelling,' said Christopher Mapp. 'We initially had a technology stance, three years ago we got into content development, 18 months ago we got into distribution and exhibition and now this. But it is all just about bringing fantastic stories to market.'

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