Alliance Atlantis Pictures International has signed an output deal with Spanish TV network Telecinco for genre titles from its Le Monde Entertainment division. The agreement will begin with Second Skin, a thriller starring Natasha Henstridge, Angus MacFadyen and Peter Fonda, which was shot on location in South Africa.

The deal was negotiated by Mark Horowitz, president of Alliance Atlantis Pictures International, and Ghislain Barrois, managing director of acquisitions and co-productions for Telecinco.

Telecinco had previously acquired the Le Monde titles Falling Through and CaraCara. Horowitz has also closed an output deal for the Le Monde titles with Forum Films of Israel, which already has a parallel output deal for higher budget features from Alliance Atlantis.

Meanwhile Alliance Atlantis Communications has acquired all Canadian rights to World War II drama Varian's War: A Forgotten War, a World War II drama which will premiere on Showtime in the US.

The film stars William Hurt, Julia Ormond, Matt Craven, Alan Arkin, Maury Chaykin and Lynn Redgrave and is executive produced by Barbra Streisand's Barwood Films along with Ardent Productions, the UK company run by Prince Edward aka Edward Essex.

The film, currently shooting in Montreal, tells the true story of Varian Fry, a Harvard graduate who built an underground rescue network that saved some of the most influential cultural figures in Europe during World War II. Fry (played by Hurt) saved artists such as Marc Chagall, Hannah Arendt, Heinrich Mann and Franz and Alma Werfel as well as 2,000 others during the course of the war.

Lionel Chetwynd is the director of the film, a Canada-UK co-production between Kevin Tierney's Montreal-based Ardglasson Productions and Michael Deakin's UK-based Gryphon Films. Executive producers are Streisand and Cis Corman of Barwood and Wessex of Ardent.