Kasander, F&ME announce pact including $17.5m initial slate

The deal covers an initial four films over the next 12 months, with more projects to be revealed before the AFM.

The companies said the initial deal is worth over $17.5m in production spend.

The first project on the slate is Paula van de Oest’s The Domino Effect, about what would happen to families if the global economy came to a halt. The Domino Effect is financed by the Netherlands Film Funds, the Rotterdam Media Fund, COBO, VARA, Video Film Express and Molinare using the Michigan state credit and the UK tax credit.

“The Domino Effect is already in the can and is currently editing in the Netherlands,” says F&ME co-principal Mike Downey. “It will move to London to complete post-production later this year having completed shooting in the US, India, London, China, South Africa and the Netherlands. The film has taken on a powerful subject:  that which shows people in different countries or continents might not seem to be interrelated but there is more than meets the eye and we might be more connected than we sometimes like to think.”

Following that project will be Cross My Mind, now in development with the UK Film Council, Screen Yorkshire and the Netherlands Film Fund, with MEDIA support. UK director Antonia Bird (Priest) is set to direct in early 2011 from a screenplay by Naomi Wallace and Bruce Macleod. The film will shoot in Netherlands and the UK.

“Cross My Mind is an intense erotic thriller about the urgency and deceit of desire that plays out between a married older woman and a young wounded, blinded soldier.” said F&ME’s Sam Taylor, “As the soldier begins to recover, the older woman is not who he thinks she is. It’s a very powerful piece, tight, taut and very commercial.”

The third feature will be Goltzius and The Pelican Company by Peter Greenaway, about the 16th-century Dutch engraver Hendrick Goltzius. That film will be a co-production between Kasander Film in the Netherlands, Film and Music Entertainment in the UK, CDP in France and Film Afrika in South Africa, and will shoot in Cape Town on a $2.75m budget in early summer 2011.

The fourth project announced, and the one with the biggest budget, will be a screen adaptation of Dutch children’s book To Be King (Koning van Katoren) by Jan Terlouw. Sander Burger will direct that $7m fantasy film about a teenager who has to complete impossible trials to become king.

“A key UK partnership is essential if we are to compete with our English-language projects in the international marketplace,” said Rotterdam-based Kasander, who has produced films by the likes of Peter Greenaway and Andrea Arnold. “In Film and Music Entertainment we have found a UK-based fellow traveller whose doors are open to making truly international European films. Their in-house relationship with Molinare fits perfectly with our existing European and international production relationships.”

He added: “The European market is such that we need to create a series of reciprocal production arrangements, which benefit all parties. And by hooking up with Film and Music Entertainment on a long term basis, we are creating another block in our series of international relationships that can provide as much security that is ever possible in this kind of business.”