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PRODUCTION UK

Winterbottom as busy as ever

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Prolific and seemingly tireless British director Michael Winterbottom is busy with a raft of new projects. After finishing the documentary The Shock Doctrine, based on Naomi Klein’s anti-globalisation bestseller, Winterbottom is currently filming The Killer Inside Me.

After initial financing fell through, Canadian investor Hero Entertainment stepped in with 20% of equity with sales agent Wild Bunch making up the rest of the $13m budget through pre-sales. Another collaboration with producer Andrew Eaton, the film is a noir thriller based on Jim Thompson’s popular novel and stars Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson and Bill Pullman.

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In addition, Winterbottom is working on his ambitious project Seven Days for Channel 4, with Film4 holding worldwide distribution rights. The film stars John Simms as a man jailed for drug running and looks at his relationship with his wife, played by Shirley Henderson. Co-written by the director with Laurence Coriat (Genova [+see also:
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), the film is being shot for a few weeks at a time over five years, with the finished product due in 2012.

Winterbottom is also attached to direct London Fields, based on the novel by Martin Amis, for Periscope Entertainment, Muse Productions and Curiously Bright Entertainment. The film follows a psychic who encounters two men in a London bar, one of whom might be her killer.

Finally, Winterbottom is due to direct Murder in Samarkand, for his own Revolution Films, adapted by British playwright/screenwriter David Hare (The Reader [+see also:
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) from the memoirs of Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan. Steve Coogan will play Murray, who was deposed from his position after he drew global attention to human rights violations in Uzbekistan.

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