Germany's BabelsbergFilm is in negotiations to become a co-producer on Oscar-winning documentaryfilmmaker Kevin Macdonald's fiction feature film debut The Last King OfScotland.

ScreenDaily.com has learnt exclusively that the Studio BabelsbergMotion Pictures' production unit - whose previous credits included serving asco-producer on Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning The Pianist, City Of God director Fernando Meireilles' The ConstantGardener and Alien Vs. Predator - is looking to join FilmFour, DNA and FoxSearchlight on the adaptation of Scottish writer Giles Foden's novel of thesame name which won the Whitbread First Novel Award in 1998.

The novel focuses on ayoung Scottish doctor who is enlisted as Idi Amin's personal physician and isdrawn ever deeper into the brutal dictator's inner circle until he begins toquestion his complicity in the atrocities.

According to a source atStudio Babelsberg, The Last King Of Scotland will have a medium-sized budget - "under $20m,but this depends on the actors cast" - and be shot on location in Africaand at the Babelsberg studios at the end of 2004.

Kevin Macdonald hasrecently been in the cinemas with his documentary Touching The Void and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in2000 for One Day In September.