Sorrentino's Sean Penn project to start shooting August 16

Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s first English language project, This Must Be The Place, which stars Sean Penn and Frances McDormand, will kick off its 10-week shoot on August 16 in Dublin before moving to US locations of Michigan, New Mexico and New York.

The project has a robust budget of $28m. Italy’s most costly recent production was Giuseppe Tornatore’s Baaria, which had a budget of $30-35m via Medusa film.

The new details were announced today at Milan’s Intesa Sanpaolo bank, underscoring the first time a bank enters into contractual production with the established production houses, in this case Medusa Film, Lucky Red and Indigo Film through their IMI Investimenti. The investment is possible via a clause in Italy’s tax credit that allows non-cinema oriented industries to invest in film and receive tax breaks.

This Must Be The Place focuses an aging rock star that decides to hunt down the Nazi criminal who ordered his father’s execution in a concentration camp. Penn and Sorrentino met while Penn served as president of the Cannes jury in 2008 that awarded Sorrentino the Prix du Jury for his film Il Divo.

A year later Sorrentino sent Penn a script and he agreed to take the project, which was initiated by his long time producers Francesca Cima and Nicola Giuliano of Indigo with Lucky Red’s Andrea Occhipinti.

Occhipinti described the production breakdown to ScreenDaily as 70 percent Italian (20 percent each for Medusa, Indigo and Lucky Red and 10 percent for Intesa Sanpaolo Bank). Sanpaolo will pony up $3.15 mil (E2.5 mil) for the project.

French co-producers Michele and Laurent Petin for France’s ARP Selection have a further 20 percent of the production while Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Ireland’s Element Pictures are in for the remaining 10 percent.

The project recently received the green light for funds from Eurimages and the support of the Irish Film Board.