Rex Media, which enjoys a multipicture relationship with Ray Stark's Rastar, is close to sealing a similar co-financing and sales arrangement with veteran TV producer Glen A Larson.

The first picture to fall under the agreement will be a film version of long-running series Knightrider with original star David Hasselhof committed to being involved. Larson, whose longterm contract with Universal recently expired, was also responsible for hit TV franchises such as Battlestar Galactica, The Fall Guy, Magnum PI and Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. He is now looking to be both a high profile movie and TV producer.

In addition, Rex - the production and sales outfit formed earlier this year by marketing veterans George Lascu and Cyndy Kiper - has set hot young actresses Natasha Lyonne (American Pie) and Thora Birch (American Beauty) to star in Deep Freeze, its first feature from Rastar.

The company has also enlisted sales veterans Ralph Alexander and Keith Walley to consult on the sales agreements for individual films and packages and is in negotiations with Imperial Bank for a financing facility that will kick off with Night Of The Iguana, another Rastar picture which stars Jeremy Irons.

Also being sold at the market is Sydney, a family movie about a talking koala bear which will shoot in New Zealand. Produced by Lascu and Chuck Binder (Simpatico, Gloria, Last Dance) in association with Grant & Dale Bradley's New Zealand-based Daybreak Productions, the film stars Faye Dunaway, Robert Wagner, Steve Guttenberg, Daryl Hannah, Rachel Hunter and Ralph Moeller. The talking koala is being designed by the team behind the talking pig in Babe.

Deep Freeze is directed by Zoe Clarke-Williams, who last directed Mary Jane's Last Dance for MGM. Executive producer is Rastar's Marykay Powell. A $13m teen comedy, it tells the story of the secret games of seduction played by a bunch of ultra-sophisticated 17 year-old US and European girls at a Swiss boarding school. It is set to shoot in Germany and Switzerland in spring 2001.