One month after laying him off, Alliance Atlantis has contracted former international sales head Mark Horowitz to finish the job of selling Double Down, the Neil Jordan-directed remake of Bob Le Flambeur, starring Nick Nolte.

Ted Riley, President, Distribution for Alliance Atlantis' newly formed Entertainment Group told ScreenDaily, "The contract negotiation is in the process of being done now. Mark was working on [Double Down] very closely and he has the contacts and the smarts to see it through."

AAC, which laid off 80 employees this January, is scaling back its production aspirations, particularly higher budget pictures like Double Down. Veteran AAC executive Charlotte Mickie, who was reassigned to head up sales for the company in the wake of the cut-backs, will be handling other prestige projects that will have a more specialised, art-house skew to them.

Said Riley, "We have fifteen to eighteen movies being released in the next few months. There's a lot of significant films for Charlotte to be working on."

Double Down has yet to find a US distributor, a thorny issue for a film with a budget of $30m. Other major territories outstanding are Germany, Japan, and France, where there are issues to be ironed out with Canal Plus which holds some of the underlying rights to Jean-Pierre Melville's original film. An international coproduction of France, the UK and Ireland, the film was fully financed by AAC, which is handling distribution in Canada and the UK and Ireland

The film has been sold to Filmes d'Elysee for Benelux, Prooptiki for Greece, Mindform for Iceland, RAI for Italy, Ecofilmes for Portugal, Egmont/Nordisk for Scandinavia, Aquimia for Spain, Italia Films for the Middle East, Shaw Renters for Singapore, Imagine for Brazil, Warner/Nu Metro for South Africa and Revoluntionary for Eastern Europe.