German media fund ApolloMedia has unveiled a raft of four titles to go into production in the first half of 2003.

The first pictures to roll are Mick Garris' thriller Riding The Bullet based on an e-book by Stephen King (who is serving as one of the film's executive producers) and Slipstream. Both will be co-produced by Apollo with Brad Krevoy's Motion Picture Corporation of Europe (MPCE) at locations in South Africa between February and April, and sales are being handled by Krevoy's MPCA.

These will be followed by the David Mamet-penned thriller Spartan, which already has Val Kilmer cast and will be co-produced by Apollo with ApolloProMedia and Jan Fantl's Quality International between March and June, and by the classical period romance Tristan And Isolde, to be directed by Kevin Reynolds between June and September. This latter film will be structured as a UK-German-Czech co-production between Apollo, Matrix, Film Group 111 and Quality International.

In a difficult market environment last year, ApolloMedia's funds raised around Euros 67m from private German investors for the production of internationally marketable feature films.