German private media fund CP Medien has added the Pathe production The Night Of The Medicis and the Joseph Vilsmaier-produced "bizarre horror comedy" Diamond Dead to its production slate which already includes Robert Altman's The Company which began shooting in Chicago last month.

The new Pathe project, which will be shot in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bavaria, marks a new stage in the working collaboration between CP Medien and the French company, which has already seen the German fund putting up the financing for such productions as Costa Gavras' Amen, Eric Rohmer's The Lady And The Duke, Alain Chabat's Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, Stefan Schwartz's The Abduction Club and Peter Hewitt's Thunderpants.

Announcing the two projects, CP Medien added its voice to the calls by the media fund interest group Verband Deutscher Medienfonds to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's administration, including the newly installed State Minister for Culture Christina Weiss, for improvements to be made to the parameters for funds wanting to bring international projects to shoot in Germany.

"Producing in Germany has been part of CP Medien AG's way it sees itself since its foundation in 1996," CP Medien's board members Roland Pellegrino and Ehrhard van Straaten stated. "But it must pay off as our private investors want quite rightly to make as high a return as possible with their participation."

"We want to shoot internationally marketable feature films preferably in Europe and best of all in Germany. We want to raise Germany's profile as an excellent production location and give it lasting support. We want to continue contributing to a situation where both large projects with top-notch casts as well as smaller quality projects can be made here and they use the know-how of the various media regions with their professional and highly qualified staff and the state-of-the-art technical equipment," they said.

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