The five-year-old Curzon CM Development Fund (CCM), the joint venture between Curzon in the UK, Cinéart in Benelux and Madman in Australia, is broadening its remit with a lively slate of arthouse, genre and commercial titles.
Since launching in 2020, CCM has supported the development of films including Justin Anderson’s Swimming Home, Brady Hood’s Sweet Maddie Stone (yet to be filmed) and Edward Berger’s Ballad Of A Small Player.
“We’ve got about 12 projects locked in with a couple more we’re close to signing,” says UK producer Kristian Brodie, who heads the fund. “All of the projects are director-driven.”
They include Peter Hoar’s A Waiter In Paris, an adaptation of Edward Chisholm’s memoir that is being produced by London-based critic and broadcaster Jason Solomons; Ben Hopkins has written the script and BBC Film is co-funding development.
Julia Godzinskaya and Sophie Vickers’ Meduza is producing two projects: psychological thriller Face Blind and Ibsen adaptation Ghosts from Danish Egyptian director May el-Toukhy, which has been scripted by Brad Birch.
“It has been a very positive year,” reflects Brodie, who is enthusiastic about the return of Philip Knatchbull as executive chairman of Curzon and the investment in that company from US private equity outfit Fortress.
“It’s very unusual that everybody is aligned as much as Marc [Smit at Cinéart], Paul [Wiegard at Madman] and Philip [Knatchbull],” suggests Brodie. “The three of them have different attributes. Philip oversees everything, Marc has drilled down into the finance side, and Paul is great at story and assessing whether projects have an audience.”
The fund supports development, expecting to get its money back with a premium on the first day of principal photography. It has a first-look deal to invest in production funding and a first-look deal for distribution in the three territories.
Investment levels vary: CCM put a reported £20,000 ($27,000) into Sweet Maddie Stone and £160,000 ($214,000) into the development of Ballad Of A Small Player. The strategy for the latter was for a film in the $6m-$8m budget range, but it ended up far higher due to the rising stock of Berger and the involvement of Colin Farrell. Netflix came in to buy the film outright.
Protecting distribution
The experience made Brodie and the team realise they needed to “protect” their distribution position more robustly. On subsequent projects – such as Bad Apples starring Saoirse Ronan, which was acquired by Paramount’s Republic Pictures, and Noel Coward biopic Firefly, being made through Mike Elliott’s EMU Films – CCM has put down “a commitment for production at the point at which we get involved with development”, explains Brodie. If the fund gets bought out on a project by a streamer or a studio, there will be a decent fee.
“With Bad Apples, we had this mechanism in place so that when Paramount came in and did a negative pick-up deal at AFM two years ago, we were bought out with a break-up fee which felt fair for the investment we made on that film,” says Brodie.
CCM has “self-initiated” two projects. Last Resort is adapted from the novel by Andrew Lipstein, about a writer who plagiarises the life story of his friend, with a screenplay by Teddy Wayne. It will be the fund’s first US-based project and Anonymous Content is helping to package it.
The second is This Way Up, based on a true story about Brian Robson, a Welshman in the 1960s who posted himself home from Australia in a box. “We see This Way Up as a crowd-pleasing, family-friendly, commercial comedy,” says Brodie. “We are making the most of the Australian connection we have with Madman.”
He says the fund is open for submissions. “I know how difficult it is to find development investment. We are five or six years into this fund now and people perhaps don’t know we are here.”
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