Celador Films, the UK production outfit behind StephenFrears' Dirty Pretty Things and Neil Marshall's The Descent hasunveiled its new development slate.

The slate includes a string of projects in the £3-5mbudget range from acclaimed directors such as Neil Marshall and Peter Webber (GirlWith A Pearl Earring) that Celador plans to develop and finance itself,plus bigger budget projects on which it will seek third-party funding.

Following on from The Descent, Celador isdeveloping an Untitled Neil Marshall project. Celador will co-producewith Northmen Productions, the company run by Marshall and long time partnerKeith Bell. Billed as an action thriller, it is a brand new project andseparate from previously reported Neil Marshall projects already in development,Eagle's Nest and Outpost.

"It is a new project and we're cracking on with it andwe're hoping to make it in 2007. It will be the same team: including the sameeditor, DP and production designer. We just need a script and some actors!,"said Celador joint managing director Christian Colson.

Next up for Celador in terms of production is MartynPig, which the company hopes to shoot in upstate New York next year. Basedon the novel by Kevin Brooks, the film is described as a coming of age noirabout a boy, a girl, a corpse and a suitcase full of money. British short filmand commercial directors Tom and Charles Guard will make their directorialdebut from their own script. Colson will produce alongside New York-basedproducer, Anna Waterhouse. Colson described the project as 'a Sundance kind ofmovie' and said he hoped to be able to greenlight it with the next few months.

The company is also working with writer Richard Cottanand Peter Webber on Farang, a low-budget road movie set in Thailand.Webber is next directing Behind The Mask: Young Hannibal, which startsshooting in August in Prague for Dino de Laurentiis.

Meanwhile, newcomer Ben Gregor has scripted ThePrinciples of Calmness, a comedy about a group of neurotics on astress-management course.

Celador also has a number of bigger budget projects indevelopment. These include BAFTA-winner Adrian Hodges' adaptation of ClaireTomalin's biography of Samuel Pepys, The Unequalled Self, which is aco-production between Celador and the UK Film Council Development Fund.

UK screenwriter Paul Webb is working on an originalscreenplay based on events following the accession of Lyndon Baines Johnson toUnited States presidency in the aftermath Kennedy's assassination. UntitledLBJ focuses on Johnson's unlikely relationship with Martin Luther King andthe coming-of-age of the civil rights movement.

Big Deal, a comedy about a hapless Englishjournalist attempting to navigate the shark-infested waters of theinternational poker circuit is also in the works.

Colson commented: 'The plan is to continue with theformula of producing and financing movies in the £3-5m range, while alsobeginning to develop higher budget films that would require, and hopefullyattract, third party partnership funding'.
Celador's third movie Separate Lies will be released in the US onSeptember 16 and will have its UK premiere as the Mayor's Gala Screening at theLondon Film Festival on October 24. The film stars Emily Watson, Tom Wilkinsonand Rupert Everett and marks the directorial debut of Oscar-winning writerJulian Fellowes.