Late Night Shopping writer-director team Jack Lothian and Saul Metzstein are to make romantic comedy Northern Soul for Ideal World Films, the Glasgow-based production operation behind their highly regarded Berlin festival debut.

The music-fuelled story of a group of young people partying in Blackpool in the north of England will also re-unite the up-and-coming filmmakers

with Ideal World film head Angus Lamont, whose producing credits include early shorts and TV work by film-makers such as Jim Gillespie and Damien O'Donnell.

Speaking in Cannes, Lothian, Metzstein and Lamont aim to shoot the £3m Northern Soul late this year. Lothian and Metzstein are also developing two larger scale productions ' Airports, Hotels, Etc, a comedy about two business men whose lives fall apart, and Mr Fix It, a comedy about a man whose job it is to clean up the mess rock stars leave behind.

"We want to make commercial films but we hope its commercial because it's quite an individual idea," Metzstein said. "Cake and eat it."

Ideal World, the film arm of leading TV factual producer Ideal World Productions, is nearing production on a slate of films after focusing on development since its launch in 1997. Founded by TV presenter-producer Muriel Gray, the company is working on the Quadrophenia-esque Awaydays, with Pat Harkins to direct; romantic comedy Every Third Of June; thrillers Comes The Time and Hell Eternal; and offbeat love story Necessary Vagabonds.