Joel Silver's production outfit Silver Pictures is launching a new low-budget production division Zinc Pictures which will bow with the $5m thriller Proximity directed by Scott Ziehl, whose critically acclaimed first film Broken Vessels premiered at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival two years ago.

The company emerged out of the ashes of Silver's last low-budget company Decade Entertainment, a partnership with Richard Donner, which produced Double Tap (sold internationally by Kushner-Locke International) and Made Men (sold by Overseas FilmGroup).

Overseas has taken international sales rights on Proximity. HBO will have first run cable rights on the Zinc product, as it did on the two Decade pictures.