Miramax International has closed two new distribution deals in Germany with buyers it has never sold movies to before: Andreas Klein's Splendid Medien and AndreasFallscheer's brand new outfit Falcon Entertainment.

Splendid boughtGerman rights to James Mangold's Kate & Leopold starring Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman,while Falcon took rights to David Zucker's comedy The Guest starring Ashton Kutcher and Tara Reid,and to Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio which stars Benigni and his wife Nicoletta Braschi.

Splendid, whichrecently freed up over $20m worth of funds when it sold its stake in IEG toIntermedia, aggressively pursued Kate & Leopold, according to Rick Sands, the presidentof worldwide distribution at Miramax Films.

Sands had dealtwith Fallscheer extensively when he was head of Highlight Communications, theSwiss-based company he founded in 1982 with Heinz Bleisch. Fallscheer recentlyleft Highlight to set up Falcon.

Sands said that he still has on-going relationships withHighlight and other regular clients such as Concorde, Constantin and Tobis.

Kate &Leopold has to dategrossed $47.1m on release in North America; The Guest, which is the story of a low-levelemployee who volunteers to house-sit for his boss in the hopes of winning adate with his daughter, opens later in the year; while Pinocchio is scheduled for a prime prestige slotrelease on Dec 20th.