While the comedy thriller Bad Eggs does not have a particularly large budget in terms of the norm in Australia, it has attracted the single biggest financial commitment to an independent feature in entertainment conglomerate Village Roadshow's long history.

"Mass audiences demand big laughs and we believe that Bad Eggs will deliver," said managing director Graham Burke of radio and television comedian Tony Martin's directing, writing and producing feature debut about two undercover detectives with way too much publicity. The investment is via Roadshow Film Distributors, which has signed for all Australian rights.

Martin and his producing partners Greg Sitch and Stephen Luby, who are making the film under the Double Yoker Films banner, have yet to appoint an international sales agent.

Bad Eggs is the sixth feature to be funded from the $8.5m (A$16m) raised in 1999 and 2000 by Macquarie Bank under a government-sanctioned pilot scheme aimed at attracting more private investors into film and television production.

But it is the first not to also involve the Australian Film Finance Corporation. Four of the six films have Roadshow attached.

A third investor is pay-TV channel Movie Network, which is owned by Village Roadshow, Disney, MGM and Warner Bros.

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