Pete Ford’s Melbourne-based Resolution Independent has brought on board Wayne Duband, former president of Warner Bros International, as executive producer for Resolution’s planned slate of big-budget genre films.

The next film to be produced by Resolution will be Russian director Nikolai Pigarev’s Cold Patrol, written by Christopher Webster. Ford is producing the English-language action adventure film, to shoot in late 2013 in the Arctic Circle. The budget is likely to be under $8m.

The story follows a dogsled team in the Arctic that discovers an abandoned Soviet town that has been overtaken by zombie polar bears. Resolution is looking for partners on that project now.

Meanwhile, the company is at AFM representing world rights to Pigarev’s Meteletsa: Winter of the Dead [pictured] the first Russian-language zombie film. That film has its world premiere at the Leeds International Film Festival on Saturday and Resolution is close to announcing a first deal.

Resolution aims to work on films of budgets up to $100m, taking advantage of Australia’s 40% Producer Offset. They expect to partner with studios on some projects.

“These are studio-level films but we have our options open. Studios could finance with us, but we can also package a film financially with key territories sold and the producer offset and then get a studio partner on board later,” Ford told Screen.

Future projects also include Popbot, adapted from the graphic novel by Ashley Wood, about a punk rocker saving humanity from a robot uprising; and Wynter Dark, a feature film being developed as well as a graphic novel to be published in June 2013.

After leaving Warner, LA-based Duband formed Wayne Duband Consulting with clients including DreamWorks, Paramount, Sony and Lucas Films. “I always wanted to reconnect with Australia,” Duband says of coming on board with Resolution (he will continue to reside in LA). “When I met Pete, I saw that it wasn’t about developing Australian films, it was about making films in Australia. There was an opening to do studio-type films in Australia.”

Ford launched Resolution Independent in 2006, and the company’s first feature production was Jamie Blanks’ Storm Warning.

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