Fox Searchlight

Fox Searchlight has picked up North American and South American distribution rights to "Bend It Like Beckham," a British box office hit about an immigrant girl who dreams of becoming a soccer player.

The film, directed by Gurinder Chadha, stars Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. It has grossed $12.9 million in Britain to date.

The acquisition marks the third at this market for Fox Searchlight, which also has bought Neil Jordan's "The Good Thief" and French film "The Spanish Apartment."

Marc and Peter Samuelson

London- and Los Angeles-based producers Marc and Peter Samuelson have unveiled a slate of American and British movies to shoot in the coming year, with directors including Robin Swicord, Luis Mandoki, Paul Mazursky and Richard Loncraine.

Swicord, who wrote screenplays for "Little Women" and "Matilda," will make her directorial debut with "The Mermaids Singing," an intergenerational Irish love story she is adapting from Lisa Carey's novel.

Mexican-born Mandoki ("Angel Eyes") will direct "Need," which Columbia Pictures will distribute domestically. The thriller, adapted from Larry David's novel, concerns a suicidal young woman who is victimized by her female psychiatrist after the patient starts an affair with the shrink's husband.

Mazursky is attached to direct "Freud and Jung," which is based on the true story of how the founders of modern psychoanalysis fell out over a woman. Loncraine will direct "Appassionata," a May/September romance written by Felice Fallon.

Radar Pictures

 Radar Pictures and Focus, Universal's new specialty arm, are teaming to develop a movie based on Barry Sadler's "Casca" novels, about a Roman legionary who killed Christ and is cursed to live forever.

The two companies have optioned all 22 books in the series as the source material for a possible franchise. John Turman ("Iron Fist," "Silver Surfer") will write the screenplay to the first movie, which takes place in the present day. Roman soldier Casca Longinus has been wandering the Earth since the death of Christ, fighting a constant battle against evil. Now he comes up against his greatest adversary.

Published in the U.S. by Berkley Books, the "Casca" series has sold more than 3 million copies.

Alliance Atlantis'

With a clutch of North American deals sealed at Cannes, Peter Sussman, CEO of Alliance Atlantis' entertainment group, said that despite the downsizing of its Stateside film operations, the Canadian producer is still most definitely in the film biz.

It will be concentrating on its arthouse roots, focusing on financing, producing and distributing pics in the $5 million-$10 million range, a reduction in budgets from the $20 million-$30 million range or higher. Its TV business is thriving, thanks to "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and the crime drama's upcoming Miami-set spin-off.

At Cannes, Alliance Atlantis has announced U.S. deals on;

Neil Jordan's "The Good Thief" (to Fox Searchlight),
Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" (to United Artists)
Lynn Ramsay's "Morvern Callar," which is not yet sold in the U.S.; it premiered in the Directors Fortnight on Monday.
Richard Kwietniowski's "Owning Mahowny" (to Sony Pictures Classics).
"Virginia's Run" was sold to Constellation Films for U.S. release -- together with Alliance Atlantis in Canada -- and will be released on 700 screens across North America
Atom Egoyan's "Ararat" screening as an official selection but out of competition at Cannes. It previously sold to Miramax for U.S. rights.

Seven Hills Pictures

Reverge Anselmo's production company, Seven Hills Pictures, has committed more than $8 million in new capital to First Look Pictures to enable the indie to expand its U.S. theatrical, video and DVD distribution operations.

As part of the deal, Seven Hills will own some 25% of the company and will invest $6.05 million in cash in exchange for 2,630,434 shares of common stock at $2.30 per share.

Pictures produced by Seven Hills will be released in the U.S. by First Look Pictures.

First Look and Seven Hills previously teamed on the Kirsten Dunst-Nick Stahl starrer "Lover's Prayer." Seven Hills' upcoming slate includes "Stateside," a wartime love story written and to be directed by Anselmo, scheduled to shoot this October in New York; and "Runaway Bay," written by Anselmo.

Babelsberg Motion Pictures

Studio Babelsberg Motion Pictures, the holding company for Vivendi Deutschland's media activities, has cut a deal with Myriad Pictures to house, co-finance and co-produce Neil Jordan's "Borgia" and the Ed Pressman production "The Tenth Victim".

Babelsberg CEO Gabriela Bacher has accessed state guarantees from the state of Brandenberg with which to co-finance the films. Her deal to bring the state guarantee to the Myriad films is not to be confused with the media funds being developed by Vivendi Deutschland with its consultant CAA.

"The state guarantee allows me to highly collateralize my co-production share," said Bacher. "It's a very recent deal and, considering it was a state guarantee, it was put together quite quickly." Although she wouldn't be drawn on the budget percentage she is contributing, she said it was "meaningful". "Think in gap terms," she added.

Bacher, who took over the studio last year has been working to bring "classy films with European sensibilities and American know-how" to the facility which recently housed Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" and Jean-Jacques Annaud's "Enemy At The Gates". She said she aggressively pursued "Borgia" which is directed by Neil Jordan and stars Ewan McGregor and Christina Ricci. The film is scheduled to shoot at Babelsberg in late 2002, to be followed immediately by "The Tenth Victim".

Bacher will handle production of the films on behalf of Babelsberg, working on "Borgia" alongside producers Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey of Imagemovers and Jordan's producing partner Stephen Woolley. Nigel Phelps has been hired as production designer to recreate pre-Renaissance Rome on the lot.

"The Tenth Victim". is a remake of the 1965 Italian film directed by Elio Petri and starring Ursula Andress and Marcello Mastroianni. Pressman acquired the rights from original producer Carlo Ponti and Canal Plus Image.

A futuristic thriller about a society where organized murder hunts are the norm, the film will be directed by Josef Rusnak (The Thirteenth Floor) produced by Myriad's Lucas Foster, Pressman and Jeff Most, and executive produced by Myriad co-presidents Kirk D'Amico and Philip Von Alvensleben, who together with Foster are also executive producing "Borgia".

Focus/Universal

Focus - the new Universal-owned company merging Good Machine International and USA Films - is starting to outline its modus operandi, pledging a commitment to original-language films and representing a new source of studio movies to independent buyers.

Focus co-chiefs David Linde and James Schamus said that their priority is to ensure that they have the best domestic North American distribution company for international film-makers, "whether they are in the English language or in Tuvalu" according to Schamus.

At the same time, Focus International is already in negotiations with its studio parent to handle sales of future Universal product in select or all international territories. Schamus also said that talks have been held with Universal's major movie distribution company UIP about potential synergies. "We'll always do what's best for the film," said Schamus, "but it's great to have the ability to have access to UIP. Of course different kinds of films work better in the UIP structure than others."

Meanwhile the Focus acquisitions team now consists of former USA buyers Steven Raphael and Amanda Klein along with Good Machine's senior vice president Amy Kaufman and former Universal buyer Jason Resnick - all of whom work with the studio's London-based acquisitions chief Graeme Mason.

But the duo's top priority is that international film-makers with whom they have worked at GMI embrace Focus. "This is a home for international film-makers that isn't a colonial one," explained Schamus. "Directors like Ang Lee, Pedro Almodovar, Zhang Yimou and Alfonso Cuaron understood immediately the importance of this deal. Now they have an international company that is just as excited to distribute their local language films as well as their English language ones. We want to be a dynamic, multi-valent international company."

If Schamus had his way, he says, he would have loved to have handled US distribution of Cuaron's "Y Tu Mama Tambien" on which GMI was partnered as the international sales company. Of course, the film was instead sold to IFC Films under Bob Berney - the expert distributor who, only two years previously, had been hired by Good Machine to release its controversial movie "Happiness".

That of course has now all changed and Linde and Schamus are working closely with the USA Films team under Jack Foley on upcoming releases African American comedy "Deliver Us From Eva" and Ozon's French picture "8 Femmes". "If it's not a movie for everyone, it's a movie for us," said Schamus. "We define the whole company as one which defines its opportunities by their specificity. We aim to find a film's audiences with as much precision as possible."

They added that there are few overlaps at the company. "There is very little redundancy at the company. We will just keep doing what we've always been doing," said Schamus, "ensuring that we have no pre-judgments about language or genre."

Bavaria Film International (BFI)

Bavaria Film International has taken over sales duties from World Sales Christa Saredi on a trio of Michael Haneke films and a library that also includes pictures by Hal Hartley, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Assi Dayan and Bakhtiyar Khudojnazarov.

The move sees Bavaria complete the take-over of the WSCS catalogue that was previously handled by Christa Saredi and its Cologne-based offshoot Orfeo Films, which was headed by Helen Loveridge.

Bavaria will now handle sales of;

Pan Nalin’s "Samsara" and "Ayurveda", Samsara is a first feature film of Pan Nalin. His other work includes a wide range of short fiction and experimental films, among them, Khajuraho (1992), Doubt (1994) and Eiffel Tower Trilogy (1995). Many of his documentaries were co-produced and screened worldwide: Tulkus (1993), The Nagas (1994/95) and Devadasi: Sacred Courtesan (1996/97). His latest feature length documentary Ayurveda: Art of Being (2001) is currently been released worldwide.
Emir Kusturica’s "Super 8 Stories" A huge hit on the festival scene, Emir Kusturica's wild documentary sets out in pursuit of 'Balkan Punk', a joyous fusion of musical styles as diverse as punk, jazz and Romany folk, a sound familiar to those who loved the exhilarating score of Kusturica's last feature, Black Cat, White Cat. The film focuses on the ironically named, No Smoking Orchestra, which was founded in Sarajevo during the late 70s and rose to cult status, passing unprotected and unbiased through the devastating history of the region. With all of Kusturica's trademark visual flair, the film cuts Super-8 images, shoot-from-the-hip camera work, private home movies and interviews with the band into a dizzying vortex.
Aki Kaurismaki’s Cannes competition film "The Man Without A Past".
Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher" (La Pianiste), with Isabelle Huppert
Michael Haneke's "Code Inconnu" with Juliette Binoche
Michael Haneke's "Wolfzeit", which is now in production with Isabelle Huppert; Maurice Benichou, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Francois Berleand starring.