All articles by Francoise Meaux Saint Marc – Page 8
-
News
Closet, booming exhibition lift Gaumont Q1 figures
Beleaguered French major Gaumont has seen its sales jump 44% for the first quarter of 2001. This comes as a welcome reprieve for the company, which saw revenues drop 50% in the last quarter of 2000 and 15% for the full year, mostly due to the dismal box office performance ...
-
News
Wild Bunch unveils brand new slate for 2001-2002
Wild Bunch - which is handling a record ten titles in selection in Cannes this year - has boarded a raft of new French and foreign projects.The 2001-2002 slate of StudioCanal's speciality division includes US title Spun, a first feature by Jonas Ackerlund, Peter Mullan's Irish drama Magdalena, Cedric Klapisch's ...
-
News
Maya sparks Indian controversy at Cannes
Cannes market title Maya - which deals with the sensitive subject of young girls raped by village priests as a coming-of-age ritual in certain regions of India - sparked a lot of interest from buyers when it screened on May 12. Unfortunately, it has attracted a much less enthusiastic attention ...
-
News
M6 to buy French distributor SND from RTL Group
M6, the French broadcaster which has been quietly been acquiring all French rights to films such as Martin Scorsese's mega budget Gangs of News York, is in the process of taking control of its theatrical distribution operation with the purchase of RTL Group's SND.RTL is also a main shareholder in ...
-
News
Miramax may remake Besson-produced Weekend Break
Having bought just about everything this year, Miramax Films is now out to remake just about everything. The Weinstein powerhouse is negotiating remake rights for 15 Aout (Weekend Break), a three men and some children tale reminiscent of one of the most succesful re-makes ever - Trois Homme Et Un ...
-
News
Hurt joins Deneuve on trip to Marshall's Heaven
William Hurt is to co-star with Catherine Deneuve in Au Plus Pres du Paradis (Nearest To Heaven), the next film by award-winning French director Tonie Marshall.French sales outfit Flach Pyramide International is launching pre-sales in Cannes on the $7m title - which will be shot in both French and English ...
-
News
Celluloid adds Quinzaine title Lan Yu to slate
Celluloid Dreams has picked up sales right on Directors' Fortnight title Lan Yu, by Hong Kong film-maker Stanley Kwan (The Island Tales). The pick-up takes Celluloid's haul of Cannes festival this year to an astonishing eleven.Lan Yu is a gay-themed melodrama based on the anonymous Internet novel Beijing Story. Set ...
-
News
Kids of Kids prepare for Marathon
French TV production and distribution house Marathon International is producing its second feature film, Ken Park, the directorial debut of Ed Lachman, the cinematographer on Erin Brokovich. Lachman will co-direct with Kids director Larry Clark. Marathon produced, financed and is now selling Amos Kolleck's Directors' Fortnight title Queenie In Love, ...
-
News
Warner boards most expensive French film of 2001
Hoping to emulate this year's blockbuster success of La Verite 2, Warner Bros has boarded another potential French hit, Le Boulet (Dead Weight) .The $21.4m (Ffr158m) action comedy, directed by Alain Berberian (Paparazzi, La Cite de la Peur) from a script by Matt Alexander, is expected to be the highest ...
-
News
Besson's Europa wins Hellman distrib contract
Philippe Hellman's specialist acquisitions and production outfit UGC Ph has struck an output deal with Luc Besson's new company Europa Corp, to handle French theatrical distribution.Hellman, who is a co-founder of UGC, previously released his films through UFD, a joint venture between UGC and 20th Century Fox.The first titles to ...
-
News
Telepiu-Stream set to merge today
Jean-Marie Messier and Rupert Murdoch are today expected to announce that Vivendi Universal will have two-thirds of a new joint venture in Italian pay-TV. Terms of the new venture which will be born from the merger of Vivendi Universal's Telepiu and the News Corp-controlled Stream may be detailed this afternoon ...
-
News
Five out of five for Club Des Cinq
Coincidence or moral victory' The five French films in Official Selection at this year's Cannes festival are all set to be distributed locally by members of The Club Of Five (Le Club Des Cinq). This is a new lobby group formed by independent distributors which recently split from the two ...
-
News
Woo's Windtalkers snapped up for France and Italy
President Films, the film sales division of France Television Distribution, and Italy's RAI Cinema have pre-bought all French and Italian rights (including pay-TV) to MGM's Windtalkers. The film is directed by John Woo and stars Nicolas Cage and Christian Slater and is currently in post-production.Windtalkers carries a $120m price tag, ...
-
News
Branagh plays Russian Czar in star-heavy Napoleon
Kenneth Branagh will join the already stellar cast of the Ffr250m French mini-series Napoleon, an English-language co-production which unites seven countries and will start shooting May 21. Produced by French big-budget TV drama specialist GMT Productions , previously responsible for Monte Cristo and Les Miserables, the four-part historical drama is ...
-
News
Critics Week favours tough eclectic mix
Ken Loach's 1969 film Kes - which is to be given a special screening - will be the token British film in a wide-ranging Critics Week line-up which includes no other English-language title. The sidebar, which runs 10-18 May and is managed by France's film critics' union, has picked a ...
-
News
Exorcist beats Star Wars re-release in France
Warner Bros' director's cut of The Exorcist turned heads in France on its release, beating the Star Wars re-release with a massive 131,387 admissions from 440 prints on its opening day.The horror classic topped the weekly chart, selling 621,727 tickets in the seven days to March 20. The film, for ...
-
News
France's M6 sees net earnings leap 34%
M6, France's second-largest free-to-air broadcaster after TF1, has registered a 34% jump in its net earnings in 2000, to Euros 103.5m from Euros 77.3m in 1999, due to improved advertising sales.The broadcaster, whose main shareholders are Suez and the RTL Group, saw its revenues grow from Euros 629m in 1999 ...
-
News
Luhrmann's Can-Can opens Cannes
Baz Luhrmann's musical Moulin Rouge will open the Cannes Film Festival on May 9th where it will screen in competition, festival president Gilles Jacob confirmed on Tuesday.The 20th Century Fox picture, which stars Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, will screen as an international premiere. The studio also announced that, based ...
-
News
Canal Plus denies sale of Expand stake to RTL
An unsubstantiated report in French newspaper Le Figaro suggesting that Canal Plus is about to sell a stake in Expand, a leading French television production outfit, to Luxembourg's RTL Group has prompted vehement denials.Born of the merger between Ellipse Programmes and the Expand group, Expand is a European leader in ...
-
News
French film production dips; investment soars
Although the number of French films produced last year decreased by a slight 3.3% from 1999's level, total investment in French films rose by 16% to $636m (Ffr 4.5bn) with a record seven titles (six of them period pieces) breaking the $14m (Ffr100m) budget mark - compared with just two ...