Leading German private mediafund VIP Medienfonds is to invest in new features by Steven Zaillian, BruceBeresford and Paul McGuigan - in addition to its joint venture with RolandEmmerich.

The VIP 3 and VIP 4 fundswill be partnering Columbia Pictures for Zaillian's $74m All The King's Menwhich is being produced by Mike Medavoy at locations in Louisiana. The cast forthe WWII drama includes Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Anthony Hopkins.

Meanwhile, VIP 4 is boardingPaul McGuigan's $ 30m revenge thriller Lucky Number Slevin which is setto begin shooting in New York and Montreal from the beginning of January withJosh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Lui, Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley lined upfor the cast. Capitol Films will handle international sales.

Furthermore, VIP hascommitted to Bruce Beresford's $ 37m action thriller The Contract forMillenium Films which is slated to begin principal photography at locations inthe US in March 2005. Morgan Freeman is already attached, while negotiationsare still underway with Kevin Costner to join the cast. Avi Lerner willproduce.

Speaking to Screendaily.com,VIP Medienfonds' CEO Andreas Schmidsaid that VIP 4 was expecting to close its placement this year with over$ 500m collected from private German investors. He intends to have a productionslate of over 10 projects financed from the latest fund and will be announcingthe first of the projects as part of VIP's joint venture with Roland Emmerichby the end of this week.