Small MPU – Page 1206
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News
Newcomers split prize at Hungarian Film Week
Two films from relative newcomers - Frigyes Godros's Glamour and Gergely Fonyo's Johnny Famous - shared the best film prize at this year's Hungarian Film Week (Feb 3-8).The 31st edition of the Budapest event presented a programme of 24 features and 31 non-fiction films made in Hungary over the past ...
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Fortissimo strikes financing deal with Bank of Scotland
Fortissimo Film Sales has struck a new relationship with the film finance arm of Royal Bank Of Scotland (RBOS), allowing it to expand at a time when the sales market is getting tighter.The new facility is described as a 'multi-faceted financial structure,' which could evolve into a fully-fledged revolving credit ...
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Focus extends Mira Nair ties
Focus Features is in final talks to close a one-year, first-look deal with Mira Nair's production outfit Mirabai Films encompassing films she will both direct and produce. The agreement comes as Focus starts selling Nair's Vanity Fair in Cannes; yesterday a deal was closed for Australia with Icon Entertainment.Focus has ...
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Gold Circle UK plans unveiled
Gold Circle Films, the Los Angeles-based company which scored with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, has become the latest US company to set up shop in the UK.The operation last week unveiled its partnership with ICE Productions, the production company recently launched under Erica Motley, former head of film at ...
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Regis Wargnier finds his missing link
Kristin Scott-Thomas will star in an epic 19th century adventure about the origin of the human species to be directed by Regis Wargnier, the French filmmaker perhaps best known for Indochine and East-West. The film is one of two big-star vehicles being prepared by French sales house Wild Bunch.The Euros ...
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Icon signs with Turturro's comic musical
Icon Entertainment International has boarded Romance & Cigarettes, a darkly comic musical starring Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini and Susan Sarandon, directed by John Turturro and executive produced by the Coen brothers.MGM/UA will release the film - the latest musical offered on the Croisette after Phantom Of The Opera and ...
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Rai, Europa sign two-way pact
Luc Besson's French powerhouse EuropaCorp has sealed a major reciprocal co-production and distribution deal with Italy's Rai Cinema.The deal, valued at around Euros 7m-10m, involves six Europa pictures produced between 2003 and 2005: These are Cannes opener Fanfan La Tulipe, Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Bon Voyage, comic book adaptation Michel Vaillant, Bernie ...
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HBO Films picks up El Deseo title
HBO Films London has made its first pick-up, acquiring international rights to Lucrecia Martel's The Holy Girl from Pedro and Agustin Almodovar's El Deseo. The film is Martel's first film since La Cienega, the 2001 festival hit about two women and their families in a small town in Argentina.The Holy ...
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Sophie Marceau flies on Indo-Italian ticket
India has signed a new agreement with Italy that will see the two countries co-produce three major pictures this year, including a new movie with Sophie Marceau.Named Lezioni di Volo (Flying Lessons), the film is due to start shooting this autumn in Italy and India with Sophie Marceau in the ...
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Spanish producer eyes gross-out teen market
Spanish producer Morena Films has opened feature film production label 'Happy Hour Films' dedicated to raucous teen flicks as part of a brimming slate of new projects for 2003-2004.Happy Hour Films is an intentionally low-brow label conceived as the Spanish equivalent for Hollywood fare like American Pie. 'There's no we ...
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Walden Media journeys to Verne, Shakespeare
Cary Granat's Walden Media, the backer of James Cameron's out-of-competition Cannes screener Ghosts Of The Abyss, is to produce a big-budget 3-D movie of Jules Verne's Journey To The Centre Of The Earth as well as a new family film of Shakespeare's As You Like It.Walden will next go into ...
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Germany, Spain to renew co-production treaty
Spain's culture secretary, Miguel Angel Cortes, and German culture minister, Michael Naumann, have announced that they will sign a German-Spanish co-production agreement tomorrow (Feb 11) at the Berlin Film Festival.The accord replaces and expands on an existing agreement which the two countries signed in 1956. It aims to encourage German-Spanish ...
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Miramax goes Dutch with Twin Sisters
Miramax Films has acquired North American distribution rights from High Point Films to the Dutch local blockbuster Twin Sisters (De Tweeling) directed by Ben Sombogaart. Based on the best-selling novel by Tessa de Loo, the film's set in 1920s Europe and follows two sisters torn apart after their parents die ...
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DeAPlaneta, Mikado and Kramer launch Argentine outfit
Spain's DeAPlaneta and Italy's Mikado, both backed by Italian publishing giant DeAgostini, have joined with veteran Argentinean producer Oscar Kramer to form new Argentina-based production company KDM films.With Kramer as president and CEO, KDM aims to make two or three Spanish-language films per year on budgets ranging from Euro 1m-4m. ...
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Nicole Kidman graces von Trier with two more
After some prompting from Lars von Trier, Nicole Kidman confirmed yesterday in Cannes that she will star in his next two films, reprising the role of Grace, the heroine of competition entry Dogville. Von Trier revealed also that the third film in his U.S.A. trilogy - all of which will ...
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Firth stars in Beyond's Dead Wait
Bridget Jones's Diary star Colin Firth is to star in The Dead Wait for Beyond Films.Scheduled to start production early next year on location in South Africa, the project is to be directed by Russian Ark producer Jens Meurer, who directed 1999 Venice Black Panther documentary Public Enemy. The film ...
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Mia Bays goes Missing In Action
Mia Bays is leaving her post as head of marketing and distribution at UK National Lottery franchise The Film Consortium to launch her own production company, Missing In Action Films.Bays has already assembled a broad slate of commercial and edgier fare, mostly at first draft stage, including horror title Regeneration, ...
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Paramount to remake Italian drama Three Wives
Paramount Pictures is in final negotiations to acquire English-language remake rights to Italian drama Three Wives (Tre Mogli). The film, originally directed by Marco Risi in 2001, starts with three women from different social classes whose husbands disappear on New Year's Eve after a bank robbery. The story is a ...
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Summit dons Maybury's Jacket
Summit Entertainment has added The Jacket, a new film from Mandalay Pictures to its sales slate. Mark Wahlberg is attached to star in the lead role of the drama which is the first US film from the UK's John Maybury (Love Is The Devil).A co-production between Mandalay and Section Eight, ...
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Brussels flexes tax muscles
Testament to Cannes's growing role as a film financing arena, some 200 people turned up on Saturday afternoon to a presentation about Belgium's new tax-based film finance system. The scheme, which was greenlit only at the beginning of April and won't see its first productions until late autumn at ...