Features by Michael Radford, Sandy Johnson and Amy Lyndon have been lined up as possible projects for backing by the new Sun Gateway Entertainment (SGE) private media fund.

The German fund, which aims to raise Euros 50m this year for up to seven English-language feature film and TV productions, is managed by German media consultant Wolfgang Fischer and producer-writer-director Joshua Sinclair, with former Studio Babelsberg executive Mario Windisch responsible for marketing and finances.

SGE's advisory board comprises London-based Film Music Group's CEO Greg Rogers, producer John Levoff and consultant Mike Fowley, and the fund also has a number of advisors, including actress-singer Grace Jones (who appeared in Sinclair's Shaka Zulu financed by Victory Media), US producer Robert Enders, home entertainment business veteran Bud O'Shea, media lawyer Robert L. Oppenheim, and financial services expert Werner Klingmann.

SGE has provisionally identified a number of projects to back:

Michael Radford's $8.3m The Letters, starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Gabriel Byrne; TV director Jimmy Kaufman's $3.6m Perseverance, starring Kelly McGillis, Peter Fonda and Donald Sutherland; Sandy Johnson's $12.2m Poor Things, with Helena Bonham Carter, Robert Carlyle and Jim Broadbent; Amy Lyndon's $1.2m racial drama Odessa; Johnny Kevorkian's $3m thriller The Unblinking Eye, and Rod Hardy's $4m December Boys, starring Juliet Binoche.

SGE is also considering Joshua Sinclair's $18m Pilate, with Jack Nicholson, Jeremy Irons and Penelope Cruz, and is discussing projects with producer Mark Crowdy and Morocco's Sohail Ben Barka, founder of the Atlas Studios in Ouarzazate.

A significant innovation of this fund is the creation of a Filmmakers Workshop in collaboration with film schools in the US and Europe to develop projects with commercial promise which could then be backed by SGE.

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