EXCLUSIVE: Everardo Gout’s $35m adaptation of The Postcard Killers heads up slate.

Bavaria Film and Senator Film’s joint venture, Bavaria Pictures, is lining up adaptations of international bestsellers and local comedies for the next 12 months.

Production is set to roll later this year on Mexican director Everardo Gout’s $35m adaptation of James Patterson and Liza Marklund’s thriller The Postcard Killers as a co-production with the UK’s Good and George Films.

Bavaria Pictures’ Jan Kaiser told ScreenDaily that €1.6m funding has come from the Bavarian regional film fund for the project which is being handled internationally by Film Nation.

Meanwhile, a spring 2015 start is scheduled for the filming of an adaptation of the first book in Oliver Poetzsch’s The Hangman’s Daughter series.

Bavaria Pictures is speaking with US partners to become partners on the $20m project which already has Munich-based Lionsheart as a co-producer.

According to Kaiser, the story set in southern Germany 20 years after the Thirty Years War could be the beginning of a film franchise or a high-class TV series.

A previously announced international project, Bille August’s adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity, is now going into the financing stage to be a co-production between Hungary, Austria and Germany.

On the home front, director Christian Alvart will direct the comedy Halbe Bruder, starring German rapper Sido, comedian “Teddy” Tedros Teclebrhan and The Physician’s Fahri Yardim, as a co-production with Konrad Film and Alvart’s Syrreal Entertainment. Universal Pictures will distribute in Germany.

And Josephine Preuss is to headline Holger Haase’s comedy Bodycheck, set in the world of  Bavarian ice hockey.

The joint venture between Bavaria and Senator was launched in 2012 and has so far produced the mainstream cross-over comedy Miss Sixty which Senator will release in German cinemas in April.

Senator and another production arm of Bavaria Film, Bavaria Filmverleih- und Produktions GmbH, were involved in Dominik Graf’s Competition film Beloved Sisters, which will be released by Senator this spring.

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