John Lee Hancock’s legal drama Monsanto, starring Laura Dern, is set to shoot in Germany for Netflix, with Jonathan Bailey joining the cast, replacing the previously announced Glen Powell.
The project has been awarded €500,000 in production support from FFF Bayern’s dedicated fund for international films and series. It has also received support from the regional film fund’s film commission in scouting locations for the shoot in Bavaria.
Bailey will play the real-life role of untried attorney Brent Wisner who takes on the seemingly insurmountable lawsuit against the US chemical company Monsanto, claiming that its Roundup herbicide products cause cancer. Dern, as Monsanto’s chief toxicologist, testifies with certainty during the trial that Roundup is safe
The German-US co-production between Philip Schulz-Deyle’s KrautPack Entertainment and Moritz Borman’s Los Angeles-based Onda Entertainment was pre-sold to Netflix for over $30m at the Cannes 2024 market.
International co-productions can access up to €2m per project as a conditionally repayable loan from this fund for international theatrical films and series, with international producers requiring a German producer to apply for funding from FFF.
This latest funding for Monsanto follows the committee’s decision in February to pay out a total of €4.2m to five international projects with Bavarian companies as partners
Irish writer-director Aoife McArdle’s adaptation of Dawn King’s theatre play Foxfinder received €1.4m in funding as a co-production between the UK production outfits Elation Pictures and Rabbit Track Pictures, with Berlin-based Komplizen Film and Munich’s Trimafilm.
Furthermore, €1m was allocated to W&B Television and Turbine Studios’ German-UK six-part series Hamburg Days and to Constantin Film’s TV series remake of Donna Woolfolk Cross’ literary bestseller Pope Joan, which had originally been adapted for the cinema by Sönke Wortmann in 2008.
In addition, Munich-based visual effects studios Rise FX South received €500,000 for its work on J.J. Abrams’ Ghostwriter (working title) and € 300,000 went to the Amazon Prime Original series Superior(working title) to be produced by Switzerland’s Zodiac Pictures with its joint venture MMC Zodiac almost entirely on location in Bavaria.
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