Principal photography haswrapped on Everything Is Illuminatedin Prague this week. Directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood, thefilm is produced by Warner Independent Pictures in association withproducer/financier Marc Turtletaub and producer Peter Saraf.
Turtletaub told Screendaily.com the film was made for amodest $7m, although “it looks like a $40m movie” he said.
Turtletaub and Schreiberpraised the talent of their almost exclusively Czech crew: Executive producerMatthew Stillman arranged local production services with his productionservices company Stillking Films.
Warner Independent Pictureswill distribute the film in all media worldwide, starting with an anticipatedUS theatrical release in autumn 2005.
The company aims to produce,acquire and theatrically distribute up to 10 feature films per year, most ofthem budgeted under $20m.
First-time director andactor Schreiber began shooting on 14 June in the Ukraine, where the story isset, but most of the filming was done in the Czech Republic. Schreiber wrotethe screenplay, which is based on the acclaimed New York Times bestseller ofthe same name written by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Schreiber describes themovie as a ‘bizarre film’ inspired by the work of Terry Gilliam and EmirKusturica. He told Screendaily.com heearned ‘almost nothing’ as a first-time director. “I’ve kicked back certainelements of my salary to get a guy named Boone Naar, who is the dog trainer,who was just outside of our budget,” he said. “I just thought it was so importantto have the best dog trainer that we could possibly get.”
Everything Is Illuminated is Turtletaub’s first production with his companyBig Beach Films, which has now also begun shooting Shall Not Want, featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal in New York and willbegin shooting The Honeymoonerslaterthis month in Dublin.
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