Mark Holdom, Inc., the Los Angeles-based production and financing company run by Mark Holdom in Italy and Sam Braslau in LA, has announced further details of its slate.

MHI has arranged for the equity financing of Marcel to be directed by Isaac Florentine (Undisputed) and produced by Carsten Lorenz (The Grudge).  Principal photography of the $5m film expected to begin this autumn in Bulgaria. The Second World War film is about a young Jewish boy trying to escape out of occupied France into Spain. It will include martial arts elements.

The company has also recently snapped up screenplay rights to the adventure gamebook Deathtrap Dungeon written by Ian Livingstone. Celsius Entertainment is in the frame to partner on the project through its genre arm Fahrenheit.

“It is going to be a cross between Saw and Gladiator,” is how Holdom is pitching the project, which is about a group of slaves sent underground to fight. The one who comes out alive wins.”

The long term aim is to develop Deathtrap Dungeon into a franchise.

MHI is also bringing financing to the raft of the films announced earlier this by Future Film Groups and Fusion, among them Nicholas North from Antti Jokinen, which will star Julianne Moore.

Meanwhile, MHI is in development on the drama Last Cemetery In Berlin to be produced by Jonathan Sanger and Peter Schwartzkopff and shot in Berlin. This is about three generations of women at the time the Berlin Wall comes down.