Studio Babelsberg is optimistic that this year's operations will generate comparable results to 2007 which was the most successful financial year since the production complex's privatisation in 1992.

Last year, the group's consolidated turnover had jumped from $25.6m (Euros 16.4m) in 2006 to $135.9m (Euros 87.1m) last year with a positive result of $9.3m (Euros 6m).

Speaking to the German press agency dpa this week, Studio Babelsberg's President and CEO Carl Woebcken said that he was 'going from the assumption that we will have a similar success this year.'

The first six months had seen the studio working on such productions as Stephen Daldry's The Reader and James McTeigue's martial arts action film Ninja Assassin, while Woebcken revealed in the interview that the second half of 2008 would bring two big international productions and a large German costume drama to the production complex outside of Berlin.

'We will end up with between seven or eight productions this year after twelve in the previous year,' he said.

The studios had been busy during 2007 with 12 productions as co-producer or service provider, ranging from such big-budget US productions Wachowski brothers' Speed Racer, Bryan Singer's Valkyrie and Tom Tykwer's The International through Jaco van Dormael's futuristic Mr Nobody and Stefan Ruzowitzky's family film Lily The Witch to Ole Christian Madsen's Danish-German co-production Flame & Citron and Vanessa Jopp's comedy Messy Christmas.

Studio Babelsberg is currently serving as a co-producer with Munich-based Hager Moss Film on Thomas Jauch's action thriller

Crashpoint: Berlin for private broadcaster ProSieben about an aeroplane plummeting towards Berlin's city centre after a mid-air collision.

Interior scenes are being filmed on an original aeroplane set built in the New Film 1 sound stage by Studio Babelsberg's Art Department.

In addition, Babelsberg's studio lot and the Berliner Strasse are playing host to Egoli Tossell Film's $15m (Euros 9.5m) Hildegard Knef biopic Hilde, starring Heike Makatsch, Monica Bleibtreu, Hanns Zischler, and UK actor Dan Stevens in his first film role. The Art Department transformed facades of 26 houses in the street backlot into a scene resembling Berlin from the 1950s.

Meanwhile, it is believed that one of the anticipated international productions coming to Babelsberg in the coming weeks will be Constantin Film and Impact Pictures' Pandorum, to be directed by German-born filmmaker Christian Alvart and starring Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster.

International sales on the sci-fi thriller are being handled by Summit Entertainment.

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