The UK's Spice Factory and Australia's Beyond Films are co-developing writer/director Michael Hurst's science fiction horror film Cut Deeper, a sequel to the 1999 Australian film Cut (pictured). Shooting is scheduled to start early next year.

Cut Deeper is to be produced by Michael Cowan and Jason Piette from the UK's Spice Factory, Fred Weintraub and Thomas Kuhn of Weintraub/Khun, and representatives of Australia's Mushroom Pictures, which developed the original and financed it alongside Beyond, the South Australian Film Corporation and German fund MBP. It will be Hurst's third film involving the Spice Factory after New Blood and BJX, which is currently in post. "Spice Factory has a real enthusiasm for intelligent genre movies which is tough to find in Europe," said Beyond Films general manager Gary Hamilton. "They've become a great home for us and we are very excited about developing a number of higher budget projects with them over the next two to three years".

Kimble Rendall directed the original film, which starred Kylie Minogue and Molly Ringwald. It did exceptionally good sales abroad but fell short of expectations at the Australian box office where it was jointly released by Beyond and Mushroom.

Beyond handles a number of Spice Factory titles and the first production joint venture between the two companies was to have been Rogue, a horror thriller in which a giant crocodile terrorises a party of tourists. There are still high hopes that this film will go ahead.

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