Singapore's film industry is witnessing a big surge in output with Jack Neo's latest comedy Money No Enough 2 being one of the four local productions that starts filming this month.

The new picture marks the debut project of Neo Studios, set up by Neo and former fund manager Philip Wu. Neo's regular backers MediaCorp Raintree Pictures and Scorpio East Pictures are co-producing.

The picture celebrates the 10th anniversary of the original Money No Enough, a landmark film which collected a whopping S$5.84 m in box office receipts. Its long-held record as the third highest grossing film was only broken last year by Spider-Man 3 and Transformers.

'Once upon a time there were hits and misses. Now it's the beginning for the local industry to be successful with more hits generating audience's interest,' said Golden Village 's acting managing director David Glass.

Golden Village, which handled 10 out of the 12 local releases last year, will distribute the new picture and another new production being filmed this month - Boi Kwong's The Days about the trials and tribulations of two brothers which is scheduled for September.

The other two local films in production are Ho Tzu Nyen's Here about a man going for a mysterious psychiatric treatment, produced by GSM Media, the local subsidiary of Montreal-based multi-media company GSM Design, Akanga Films and Oak 3 Films; and Cheng Ding An's Kallang Roar about a decisive soccer match in 1977 which is the first feature film in Asia that employs Wafian's tapeless, direct-to-disk workflow.

GV also has China-set basketball teenage flick Slam by Jonathan Lim on its slate for March 20.

All of the above new productions (except Money No Enough 2) are feature debuts, marking a new wave of new Singapore directors.

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