German filmmaker Oskar Roehler, whose Angst (Der Alte Affe Angst) is a competition entry at year's Berlinale, is developing his next two film projects with X-Filme Creative Pool and Constantin Film.

Roehler (pictured), who will have Angst distributed this spring by X-Filme's distribution arm X Verleih, told screendaily that the project with the Berlin-based production house is entitled Agnes And His Brothers (Agnes Und Seine Brueder) and will go into production this summer.

"It is the story of three brothers, of whom one has become a woman and it will be an ensemble film", he explained.

Roehler expects to follow this in 2004 with a big-budget adaptation of French novelist Michel Houellebecq's bestselling book The Elementary Particles for Moovie - The Art of Entertainment's Oliver Berben and Constantin Film's Bernd Eichinger.

The news that Eichinger should be behind a screen version of The Elementary Particles should not come as so much of a surprise given that he has brought other "difficult" novels such as The Name Of The Rose, Last Exit: Brooklyn, The House Of Spirits and Smilla's Sense of Snow to the big screen in the past.