Red Box Films and Passion Pictures launch co-production deal

The first project to come out of the deal will be Marsh’s next documentary, which according to Red Box founder Simon Chinn, will be “classic James Marsh territory.”

The untitled project, which is currently shooting, has already been fully funded by BBC Films and the UK Film Council. Icon Distribution will handle international sales and have pre-bought UK and Australian rights. The film is likely to be completed next summer in time for the autumn festival season.

Under the partnership, the two companies will concentrate on producing feature documentaries for theatrical release. Red Box will be based out of Passion Pictures’ London office.

The Passion slate currently includes Amir Bar Lev’s new untitled feature documentary about the life and death of the most famous enlisted man in the U.S. military and the first feature documentary by author Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm) and photographer Tim Hetherington - Restrepo - about the daily lives of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan’s strategically crucial Korengal Valley.

Battesk, who won an Oscar for Passion Pictures with Kevin Macdonald’s feature documentary One Day In September in 2000, said: “The hope is that Simon and I, through our two companies, will offer an obvious place for both international and domestic film-makers to come and get their films made in a collaborative way, as well as presenting ourselves as a team who financiers will have significant faith in.”

Chinn added: “John and I have a similar sensibility about feature documentary making and we are using James’s project to forge a strategic partnership in which we will share projects and work together on all our documentary output.

“We are looking for stories that have the potential to work on the big screen not just aesthetically but also commercially. If we can find one or two big stories a year, that would be fantastic.”