Mike Downey and Sam Taylor's UK-based production company Film and Music Entertainment (F&ME) has signed on Scenes Of A Sexual Nature director Ed Blum for two new features, FAKE! and The Laughter Clinic.
Blum's Tin Pan Films will co-produce the films, each budgeted around $15m.
Previously announced art heist movie FAKE! is about forger Elmyr de Hory based on the book written by hoax biographer Clifford Irving (himself the basis of Richard Gere's The Hoax).
Blum is now working with Irving on a revision of Michael Kalesniko's script for delivery in June. The project will shoot by the end of the year.
FAKE! will be set up as a UK/Germany/Spain co-production. It will shoot in Hungary and Ibiza, with post being done in the UK.
The Laughter Clinic is a project Blum is co-writing with The Aristocrats director Paul Provenza. They hope to deliver that screenplay in the next three months. The project will shoot in New York City in late 2009 with a US partner.
'We're doing more reverse co-productions now,' Downey told Screen.
F&ME's development slate -- backed by a $1m fund announced in Berlin -- also includes Nigerian story Jesus Christ Airlines written by Jon Atli Jonasson and Keith English's London-set character drama The Enemy written by Peter Milligan, which will be UK-funded through an EIS (with David Marlow at SilverLight).
Another hot project in development is Untitled Stasi Project, about a Scottish professor starts working for the Stasi. Longer-term, there is a Charles Darwin film - 'a rollicking romp around the world,' Downey says - that would shoot in 2010. Stephen Daldry is working on the concept for the story now and then a 'classy writer' will be hired to do the script.
Also in development is Cassandra At The Wedding, about two sisters in the 1950s. Peter Milligan is adapting Dorothy Baker's book with Bruno Heller (TV's Rome).
F&ME's finished films in Cannes include animated Quest For a Heart, Project Two (sold via Coach 14 and attracting English remake rights - the previous title was Mirror Maze) and Juraj Jakubisko's Bathory (sold via Sola Media). F&ME's films in post are White Lightnin' (Salt) - Momentum has UK rights, The Turtle's Song (Sola Media) and Buick Rivera (Bavaria International
Blum's Tin Pan Films will co-produce the films, each budgeted around $15m.
Previously announced art heist movie FAKE! is about forger Elmyr de Hory based on the book written by hoax biographer Clifford Irving (himself the basis of Richard Gere's The Hoax).
Blum is now working with Irving on a revision of Michael Kalesniko's script for delivery in June. The project will shoot by the end of the year.
FAKE! will be set up as a UK/Germany/Spain co-production. It will shoot in Hungary and Ibiza, with post being done in the UK.
The Laughter Clinic is a project Blum is co-writing with The Aristocrats director Paul Provenza. They hope to deliver that screenplay in the next three months. The project will shoot in New York City in late 2009 with a US partner.
'We're doing more reverse co-productions now,' Downey told Screen.
F&ME's development slate -- backed by a $1m fund announced in Berlin -- also includes Nigerian story Jesus Christ Airlines written by Jon Atli Jonasson and Keith English's London-set character drama The Enemy written by Peter Milligan, which will be UK-funded through an EIS (with David Marlow at SilverLight).
Another hot project in development is Untitled Stasi Project, about a Scottish professor starts working for the Stasi. Longer-term, there is a Charles Darwin film - 'a rollicking romp around the world,' Downey says - that would shoot in 2010. Stephen Daldry is working on the concept for the story now and then a 'classy writer' will be hired to do the script.
Also in development is Cassandra At The Wedding, about two sisters in the 1950s. Peter Milligan is adapting Dorothy Baker's book with Bruno Heller (TV's Rome).
F&ME's finished films in Cannes include animated Quest For a Heart, Project Two (sold via Coach 14 and attracting English remake rights - the previous title was Mirror Maze) and Juraj Jakubisko's Bathory (sold via Sola Media). F&ME's films in post are White Lightnin' (Salt) - Momentum has UK rights, The Turtle's Song (Sola Media) and Buick Rivera (Bavaria International
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