Latest – Page 910

  • News

    Thin Red Line producer Roberdeau dies, age 48

    2002-05-09T00:00:00Z

    JohnRoberdeau, nominated with his long-time partner Robert Michael Geisler for anAcademy Award for Best Picture as producers of Terrence Malick's TheThin Red Line (1998), died onMonday, May 6th at Manhattan's Cabrini Medical Center of aheart attack. He was 48.Inpartnership with Geisler since 1979, Roberdeau had recently announced thepair's acquisition of ...

  • News

    NZ film body pulls plug on four films at Larry Parr's Kahukura Productions

    2002-05-09T00:00:00Z

    The New Zealand Film Commission's (NZFC) Alan Sorrell has confirmed that it was "reluctantly concluded" today that the government agency is unable to find a way to complete four films caught in a financial melt-down at producer Larry Parr's Kahukura Productions. The films include director Grant Lahood's Kombi Nation, Adam ...

  • News

    Max Film wraps Rose's debut Menopause

    2002-05-09T00:00:00Z

    Canadian producers Roger Frappier's and Luc Vandal's Max Film is close to wrapping production On Comment Ma Mere Accoucha De Moi Durant Sa Menopause (which translates roughly as "how my mother gave birth to me during menopause"). The debut film by director/screenwriter Sebastian Rose, the comedy tells the story of ...

  • News

    Stowe takes starring role in BVI, Random Harvest's Octane

    2002-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Madeleine Stowe is to star in Octane, the first production through the partnership between Buena Vista International and UK tax-based financier Random Harvest.Also in the cast are Norman Reedus, Bijou Phillips, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Mischa Barton. The production, made under Random Harvest's genre label Four Horsemen Films, starts shooting next ...

  • News

    Ian McShane joins in with Paper, Scissors, Stone

    2002-05-07T00:00:00Z

    Ian McShane, last seen in Sexy Beast, has taken a lead role in the psychological thriller Paper, Scissors, Stone, which went into production today (May 6) in Canada. Carly Pope, Brendan Fehr, Adrian Paul, and Rena Owen had already been cast in the film about a girl whose fascination with ...

  • News

    Ullmann withdraws as director from $9.5m Nordisk biopic

    2002-05-06T00:00:00Z

    Actress-turned-director Liv Ullmann has withdrawn from the $9.5m historical biopic on Ole Bull, a Norwegian violinist and composer who died in 1880, which is currently in pre-production at Nordisk Film. The high-profile production based on a script by local author Ketil Bjornstad and backed by Norway's most famous violinist Arve ...

  • News

    Warner France increases investment in local comedies

    2002-05-04T00:00:00Z

    Warner Bros. Pictures France has signed an exclusive distribution deal with French production house Les Films Christian Fechner for four upcoming comedies. 'We're excited to be in business with a film-maker of Christian's stature as we continue our in-country local-language production and distribution initiative,' said Francis Boespflug, managing director, Warner ...

  • News

    First-time director to make Finland's first Kung-Fu movie

    2002-05-03T04:00:00Z

    Lars von Trier's Dancer In The Dark co-producer, Blind Spot Pictures, is to produce Finland's first-ever Kung-Fu movie, from first-time director Antti-Jussi Annila.Producer Tero Kaukomaa, who formed Blind Spot in 1997 and has since made films like Geography Of Fear and Cyclomania, was so impressed with Tampere Film & Media ...

  • News

    Universal buys Good Machine and merges it with USA Films

    2002-05-03T00:00:00Z

    The independent filmmakingworld has been shrunk yet again as Universal Studios announced it is acquiringGood Machine with immediate plans to elevate the sassy New York production and saleshothouse into an autonomous Miramax-style specialty film unit that will absorball the existing assets of USA Films. To be called Focus, theautonomous operation ...

  • News

    Eurimages appoints new board member, awards co-production funds

    2002-05-02T04:00:00Z

    The European production fund Eurimages has for the first time appointed a Norwegian to its board - the 52-year-old Nils Klevjer Aas, who works for the new Norwegian Film Fund. Meanwhile, projects by Margarethe von Trotta, Alain Resnais, Gerardo Herrero and Mika Kaurismaki were among 11 European co-productions granted a ...

  • News

    Sogecine's South Of Granada signals greater co-production push

    2002-05-01T00:00:00Z

    British actors Matthew Goode, James Fleet and Laurence Fox have signed on to star alongside Spaniards Veronica Sanchez and Guillermo Toledo in director Fernando Colomo's forthcoming Gerald Brenan biopic, South Of Granada (Al Sur De Granada).The story of writer Brenan's first encounter with Spain and his love affair with a ...

  • News

    Naomi Watts joins Ned Kelly's Australian cast

    2002-04-30T05:00:00Z

    Naomi Watts will be returning to Australia in June to star alongside Geoffrey Rush, Rachel Griffith and Heath Ledger in director Gregor Jordan's Ned Kelly, which went into production today (April 29).The news highlights the benefits now flowing to Australian films as a result of the recent international attention focussed ...

  • News

    Sex-scandal priest drama acquired by Columbia TriStar Mexico

    2002-04-28T00:00:00Z

    A topical and controversial story of a priest involved in a sex scandal has been acquired by Columbia TriStar Mexico. Carlos Carrera's El Crimen Del Padre Amaro, starring Mexico's fast-rising star Gael Garcia Bernal (Amores Perros, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Motorcycle Diaries) sold all Mexican rights, with a first option ...

  • News

    Spain's MediaPro launches in to feature film production

    2002-04-25T00:00:00Z

    Spanish producer and rights broker MediaPro has announced its fully-fledged entry into feature film production, with plans to produce and back between five and seven films per year.Newly appointed film chief Juan Ruiz de Gauna, former CEO of Via Digital, said MediaPro won't "just play a financing role, we will ...

  • News

    Bernal turns revolutionary for Motorcycle Diaries

    2002-04-24T00:00:00Z

    Rising Mexican star Gael Garcia Bernal is to play Che Guevara in Walter Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries.The white hot star of Y Tu Mama Tambien and Amores Perros will spend two months in Argentina this summer preparing for the production, which is being co-financed by the UK's FilmFour and Germany's ...

  • News

    Kragh-Jacobsen starts filming on English-language Skagerrak

    2002-04-23T04:30:00Z

    Denmark's Iben Hjejle and New Zealand's Martin Henderson top the international casting line-up for veteran Soren Kragh-Jacobsen's Skagerrak, the highly anticipated English-language follow-up to his Berlin Silver Bear-winning Mifune Produced by Denmark's Nimbus Film by Lars Bredo Rahbek and Bo Ehrhardt, Skagerrak started shooting Monday April 22 on location in ...

  • News

    Warner Bros. to make live-action version of Akira

    2002-04-23T04:30:00Z

    Warner Bros. is to make a live-action feature based on the Japanese hit animation Akira. Currently in pre-production, the film is set to be released as early as 2004. The Hollywood studio has concluded a deal with Kodansha, the Japanese publisher which holds all rights to the animated feature, to ...

  • News

    The Water Giant re-locates from Canada to New Zealand

    2002-04-23T04:30:00Z

    Eight weeks of principal photography has just begun at Lake Wakatipu near Queenstown in New Zealand on the $20m family adventure The Water Giant, formerly called Ogopogo. The original plan was to shoot on Canada's Lake Okanagan, but it was too developed to offer the wilderness backdrop required. A relocation ...

  • News

    SAG faces cross-border legal assault over Global Rule One

    2002-04-22T00:00:00Z

    The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) will face legal challengesin both the US and Canada if it tries to stamp its authority beyond USterritory through its controversial Global Rule One, according to producersassociations in those two countries.Last week, the US-basedAlliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) and the CanadianFilm and ...

  • News

    Canada's Decode to shoot The Church Mice

    2002-04-21T00:00:00Z

    Canadian Production company Decode Entertainment has announced plans to make its first children's feature. The film: The Church Mice is to be shot like the Hollywood feature film Babe, combining computer graphics and live-action. Funded by the Canadian government, the feature is expected to go into production in around 18 ...