19/04/2010

The project started out as a joke, explains famous German comedian Otto Waalkes, as was the case for 7 Dwarves, his two-part version (there won’t be a third) of the seven dwarves story. Those two films, released respectively in 2004 and 2006, garnered a total of around 10m admissions in Germany.

At over 60, the showman from Emden, who has since the mid-1980s played a key role in the films in which he stars (sometimes contributing to the screenwriting, directing and production), to the point of lending them his name, has started shooting on Otto's Eleven.

The film is co-written by his faithful collaborator Bernd Eilert and his team at TransWaalFilm and directed by his friend Sven Unterwaldt (who helmed the two 7 Dwarves instalments). Like the US original, it is set in a casino, and "perhaps George Clooney will have a role", joked Waalkes this summer in popular daily newspaper Bild.

A large part of the 40-day shoot will take place in the Berlin Adlershof Studios, to the delight of Hans-Peter Urban, director of Studio Hamburg, an arm of major regional television network NDR, of which Adlershof Studios is a subsidiary. Some scenes will be shot around Berlin and in the Baden-Baden casino.

Otto's Eleven is produced by Hans Otto Mertens, Jürgen Draabe and Malte Grunert for TransWaalFilm, in co-production with Mark Popp of Popular Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures. The latter will launch the film on German screens on December 9, 2010.

(Translated from French)