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Small MPU – Page 1487
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News
Stalled thriller still awaiting Evolution's cash
UK producer Simon Channing-Williams has been forced to postpone shooting on The Game Of Love And Loathing after funding from tax-driven financier Evolution Films failed to materialise.The psychological thriller was expected to be in pre-production at the moment but it is now unclear how it will be financed. Evolution sparked ...
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Mate boards directorial debut: Private Lives
Spanish producer Mate Productions has boarded Argentinean film Private Lives (Vidas Privadas) from first-time director and popular musician Fito Paez.The film, a co-production with Paez's own Circo Beat, is set to star Cecilia Roth (All About My Mother), Gael Garcia Bernal (Amores Perros) and Hector Alterio (Plata Quemada).Roth plays a ...
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News
Lions Gate, Arrow target MOXIE
Urban drama Borough of Kings, Jury Prize winner at last month's MOXIE!/Santa Monica International Film Festival, has been acquired in an all-rights deal by Lions Gate Entertainment. Directed by Elyse Lewin, the film stars Philip Bosco, Jim Stanek, Joseph Lyle Taylor and Patrick Newall and features Olympia Dukakis. Another project ...
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News
Artisan drops IPO plans in favour of sale
Four months after the disappointing performance of its Blair Witch Project sequel, once high-flying US independent Artisan Entertainment has withdrawn plans for its initial public offering (IPO) and brought in investment bankers to explore merger and sale options. In a statement, Artisan CEO Amir Malin said the company has "received ...
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News
Icon teams with Australia's top management
The production arm of Icon Entertainment's new Australian distribution operation will be a joint venture with Shanahan Management, the highly-regarded actors agency headed by Ann Churchill-Brown. The new company, called Icon Shanahan Productions is to be run by Sally Chesher.Five years ago the Australian industry was bemoaning its lack of ...
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RAI and Lakeshore to make first Gere
Richard Gere is set to make his directorial debut with a feature film that is being planned as a co-production between Italy's RAI Cinema and Lakeshore. The two companies are currently in talks to reach an agreement on the 52-year-old actor's film, which it is understood could go into production ...
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News
Digital Renaissance to be reborn yet again
An Israeli-UK-US consortium including Capitol Films, Gravity, DLIN and the US' Kushner Locke Group is preparing to sell controversy-ridden German VFX facility Digital Renaissance after acquiring it only two years ago.News of the move revived criticism from North Rhine-Westphalia politicians about the local administration's financial support of the facility, which ...
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News
Solomon restates TEAM's losses, takes equity stake
Michael J. Solomon, the company doctor attempting to resuscitate TEAM Communications, has taken an equity stake in the stricken US-German film and TV group and restated the losses incurred under the recently departed management.The moves come at the end of a week in which no less than seven law firms ...
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Reviews
Blame It On Voltaire
Dir: Abdellatif Kechiche. France.130mins.Honoured as the best first film atlast year's Venice Film Festival, Blame It On Voltaire is a flawed butaffecting account of an illegal immigrant's adventures in Paris. Though localfilms by and about North Africans (notably Algerians) have long been part ofthe French film scene, first-time writer-director Kechiche ...
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News
Guadalajara film festival
After AmoresPerros comes De La Calle. Thestory of a gang of street children, akin in style and subject to last year'slocal box-office sensation and international festival favourite, emerged as oneof the two buzz titles at the 16th Guadalajara Film Festival inMexico (Mar 9-16).Markingthe debut of Mexican film-maker Gerardo Tort, the ...
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News
Danish Film Institute banks on serious comedies
The Danish film industry is currentlychurning out comedies with a touch of seriousness, and with Lone Scherfig'sserious dogme comedy Italian For Beginners taking a Silver-Bear inBerlin, other producers are hoping to follow suit. Among the new (romantic) comedy projectsare veteran Gert Fredholm's One Hand Clapping from Zentropa and HellaJoof's feature ...
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News
Exit Wounds tops US box office, Enemy opens big
Two new entries performed well at the North American box office but for the second consecutive weekend, the market was down on the same period last year, this time by about 8%.Warner Bros and Village Roadshow Pictures opened their latest co-production, the Joel Silver-produced actioner Exit Wounds in 2,830 theatres ...
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News
Anders' Sun by-passes US theatres for Showtime
Allison Anders' emotionally-wrenching film about theconsequences of rape, Things Behind The Sun,will receive its first commercial outing later this year as a premiere on theShowtime pay-TV network despite winning widespread critical plaudits at thisyear's Sundance Film Festival.Unable to attract decent enough advances from domestictheatrical distributors, the film's investors appear to ...
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News
Ripoli prepares English Utopia for Alquimia
Director Maria Ripoll is preparing an English-language psychological thriller for new production company Alquimia Cinema.The film, Utopia, is being prepped for a summer shoot. The script was written by Curro Royo and Juan Vicente Pozuelo (The Art Of Dying). Madrid-based Mate Productions has already boarded the project, and Alquimia head ...
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News
Buskin gets Dynamic as part of new drive
One of Italy's fastest-growing sales companies, Buskin Film, has sold a five-film package to Panama's Dynamic Group including Peter Del Monte's Against The Wind, which screened recently at the Berlin Film Festival.Buskin, which specializes in Italian auteur cinema, also sold to Dynamic the four films that launched the company at ...
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News
Village Roadshow A$3.8m short after financial scam
Village Roadshow managing director Graham Burke has told the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) that Village Roadshow Ltd's (VRL) net loss is A$3.8m from a financial scam that saw nearly A$30m wrongly removed from company accounts in 1998 and 1999. Burke was speaking on the eve of Andrew Ross Henry, ...
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News
Industry veteran Thomas dies aged 85
Ralph Thomas, director of the long-running franchise of Doctor films, has died after an illness aged 85.Along with seven Doctor titles, which initially starred Dirk Bogarde, Thomas directed such stars as Peter Finch and Katherine Hepburn in films such as No Love For Johnnie and The Iron Petticoat. His son ...
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News
Canal Plus denies sale of Expand stake to RTL
An unsubstantiated report in French newspaper Le Figaro suggesting that Canal Plus is about to sell a stake in Expand, a leading French television production outfit, to Luxembourg's RTL Group has prompted vehement denials.Born of the merger between Ellipse Programmes and the Expand group, Expand is a European leader in ...
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News
Greenlight Media to launch second animation fund
Greenlight Media and the Dresdner Bank's investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein are to launch a second BAF Berlin Animation Film fund to raise in the region of $100m for the production of up to five international animation features.According to Greenlight's chief operating officer Nikolaus Weil, BAF II, which concentrates on ...
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Australian independent exhibitors push for change
Australia's independent cinema owners are planning to push through a number of changes in the code of practices between distributors and exhibitors. The code generated considerable controversy when it was introduced three years ago, but despite increasing transparency in the industry it has failed to satisfy many independents.The Cinema Owners ...