20th Century Fox is tapping a new Euros 246m German production fund for three of its projects; The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Down With Love and Just Married.

Mediastream III, set up by financial services company Ideenkapital and regional savings banks in Cologne and Duesseldorf, will invite private German individuals to invest a minimum Euros 20,000 in the financing of Steven Norrington's action-adventure The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, starring Sean Connery; Peyton Reed's comedy Down With Love, starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor; and Shawn Levy's comedy Just Married with Ashton Kitcher and Brittany Murphy.

While 20th Century Fox will be making license payments for the worldwide exploitation of these three titles, 88.2% of the production costs will be hedged via an assumption of debt by Cologne's Stadtsparkasse. In addition, the regional savings bank will finance 40.74% of the entire production costs with a registered bond.

The first Mediastream fund backed Universal's The Fast And The Furious which has since taken over $200m box office worldwide. The second fund - with an investment volume of Euros 136m - backed Big Fat Liar, which clocked up over $47m on its US domestic release this spring, and Jonathan Demme's romantic drama/thriller The Truth About Charlie, starring Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton, set for an autumn release in North America.

20th Century Fox had previously accessed German equity through seven separate production funds launched a year ago by Munich-based leasing company Hannover Leasing (HL) to raise over Euros 360m for investment in Bobby and Peter Farrelly's Shallow Hal, Mick Jackson's The First $20 Million Is Always The Hardest, Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful, and John Pasquin's Joe Somebody.