An adaptation of Edith Wharton novel The Custom Of The Country by Mary Queen Of Scots director Josie Rourke is among 16 new projects backed by the Düsseldorf-based regional film fund Film- und Medienstiftung NRW (FMS).
€600,000 in production funding was allocated by FMS to Rourke’s planned adaptation of Wharton’s 1913 novel.
The tragicomedy of manners about a Midwestern girl attempting to ascend in New York society is currently structured as a German-UK co-production between Cologne-based MO Co-Production, a single purpose company set up by augenschein Filmproduktion, with Charles Finch’s Rabbit Foot Films.
Finch was recently a co-producer of the biopic Priscilla by Sofia Coppola who had herself been planning to adapt The Custom of the Country as a series for Apple TV+ before it was reported at the beginning of this year that the streamer had pulled its funding.
Previous works of Wharton’s which have been adapted for the cinema or television screen have included The Age of Innocence by Martin Scorsese (1993), The House of Mirth by Terence Davies (2000) and The Buccaneers series for Apple TV+ in 2023.
Rourke made her film directorial debut in 2018 with Mary Queen of Scots, starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie, and followed this in 2022 with The Nan Movie bringing UK actress Catherine Tate’s iconic grandmother character from her TV series to the big screen. She is a former artistic director of The Donmar Warehouse.
Meanwhile, €400,000 was awarded for Simon Verhoeven’s first collaboration with the Berlin production house Komplizen Film, which will see them working together on the adaptation of Joachim Meyerhoff’s bestselling autobiographical novel Ach Diese Lücke, Diese Entsetzliche Lücke.
The cast is set to include Verhoeven’s mother Senta Berger alongside Michael Wittenborn (Toni Erdmann), Devid Striesow (Yella) and Jella Haase (Chantal im Märchenland).
The largest single amount paid out at this funding session - €750,000 - went to Pandora Film’s production of Lars Jessen’s A Stroll to Syracuse which will be adapted by husband and wife writing team Heide and Rainer Schwochow from F.C. Delius’ novel. It is about a man’s dream to travel to Syracuse in the island of Sicily, hindered by the fact that he is living in East Germany.
Other projects supported in this round included award-winning Afghan director Siddiq Barmak’s Kabul-set family drama The Postman; Aron Lehmann’s screen adaptation of Daniela Droscher’s novel Lies About My Mother about a childhood in the 1980s, which marks his third collaboration with distributor-producer Tobis Film after Das schönste Mädchen der Welt and Jagdsaison; and Markus H. Rosenmüller’s film version of Dietmar Jacobs and Moritz Netenjakob’s stage comedy Extrawurst about integration and racism for Munich’s Lieblingsfilm, the company he co-founded with partners in 2008, as a co-production with Studiocanal..
In addition, FMS provided a total of €169,00 in backing for the German theatrical releases of Andres Veiel’s documentary Riefenstahl, Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s The Devil’s Bath, and Ngo The Chau’s The Door-to Door Bookstore.
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