Terra Mater Factual Studios, the independent production company allied with the Red Bull Media House, plans to produce 10 cinema features in the next five years.

Among Wolves director Gerardo Olivares is planning a new English-language dramatic feature, to be titled Among Orcas or Patagonia, and will be based on the true story of an autistic boy taken to swim with whales in Patagonia.

Terra Mater will produce with Spain’s Wanda films. The project will shoot in 2012. Like Among Wolves (being sold by Terra Mater), the film will be a hybrid of fictional drama and nature documentary.

Terra Mater is also shooting a “big and glossy” theatrical film, with the working title Mind over Matter, about five athletes going to the Paralympics in London in 2012. Gerald Salmina is directing and a second US-based director is expected to be added. “In the same way Leni Riefenstahl 1938 Olympia defined the look of cinema, our aim is to be that film in 2013,” said Terra Mater head of cinema and international theatrical sales Sophokles Tasioulis.

The film will have a budget of Euros 6m if it shoots in 2D, or Euros 9m if it shoots in 3D (the idea is currently being discussed).

“It’s a tough sell to the cinema audience but we want to create a social phenomenon where everybody’s talking about it…With the marketing muscle we have, we can launch it big,” Tasioulis added. The film could launch at Cannes 2013.

Terra Mater will also produce a theatrical feature derived from a six-part Brazilian nature series; as well as a feature shooting now about golden eagles in the Alps. That French-Austrian co-production has a budget of Euros 6m and will be completed in 2014.

“We won’t stay factual only, we also want to involve drama. We find engaging stories tha tinvolve nature, not only as scenery but as part of the plot,” Tasioulis told Screen. “We call them natural features.”

Red Bull Media House, set up three years ago, is 100% owned by the beverage company. Terra Mater is the independent production company set up by Red Bull to work on unbranded content. Vienna-based Terra Mater employs 25 people, led by CEO Walter Koehler (RBMH has about 1000 employees in Austria and the US). RBMH spends about Euros 1bn per year on content production.

Here at the AFM, Terra Mater/RBMH is also selling The Art of Flight, Mount St. Elias [pictured], Storm Surfers 3D. Mount St Elias has been released theatrically by Buena Vista (Austria) and Germany (Kinowelt).

 


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