Leading Russian producer Russian World Studios today announced that it is in negotiations to form a strategic partnership with Sergei Chliyants' New Cinema Studio.

Under the proposed deal, New Cinema Studio, which includes New Cinema Marketing and New Cinema Distribution, will become a division of Russian World Studios, responsible for production and distribution of feature films, including co-productions. Chliyants will head the new division.

'Sergei Chliyants is a respected producer with years of experience,' said Russian World Studios CEO Yuri Sapronov. 'We are excited to bring New Cinema Studio under the banner of RWS, and we plan to produce at least six full-length films per year out of this new department.'

Pending completion of the agreement, the films planned for co-production in the new division are Casual, based on the best-selling novel by Oksana Robsky; and Daddy's Daughter, directed by Dmitry Meskhiev, who is also the director of Russian World Studios St. Petersburg.

A producer since 1992, Chliyant founded Pygmalion Production in 2001, producing such films as Peter Buslov's The Bimmer (2003) and The Bimmer 2, and Kira Muratova's The Tuner (2004).

The companies share exhibition space at the European Film Market in Berlin, February 5-15.

Separately, RWS has recently wrapped production on three-part miniseries Moscow Yard, directed by Vladimir Shchegolkov and produced by Yuri Sapronov and Andrei Smirnov. RWS did not disclose the broadcaster or the date of release.

RWS was founded in 1998 and is one of the largest film and television production companies in Russian. It produced more than 500 hours of content in 2008 and plans to double that figure for 2009.