Ten top filmmakers get script support
by Annika Pham
In its latest round of support, the UK Film Council’s Development Fund has just awarded a total of £628,339 (€922,820) to ten new feature film projects to be directed by top UK filmmakers, including John Maybury (Love is the Devil), Saul Dibb ( Bullet Boy), Richard Jobson (The Woman in Winter), as well as Denmark’s Thomas Vinterberg (Festen).
Two projects are to be produced by Assassin Films: Mrs Ratcliffe’s Revolution by Bille Eltringham, co-written by Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor, is a satirical drama set in the 1960s. The film, which follows the fortunes of a socialist family who leaves Britain to live out their utopian dream in East Germany, received £100,000 (€146,870). The writer/producer team of East is East, Ayub Khan Din and Leslee Udwin, have teamed up again to make a sequel to the successful film, entitled West is West, which received £111,000 (€163,025).
Writer/director John Maybury’s new project, loosely based on the life of Victorian author, occultist and sexual revolutionist Alistair Crowley, was awarded £47,500 (€69,763); Dan Mazer, co-writer/producer of Ali G Indahouse and Danny Wallace, TV presenter and best-selling writer, received £142,750 (€209,690) to develop How to Start Your Own Country for UK producers Andy Paterson ( Girl With a Pearl Earring [+see also:
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Marion Pilowsky and Colin Leventhal (Priority Pictures) received £73,500 (€107,993) to produce Brian Hills’sThe Club, a comedy written by Peter Bowker; Cuba Pictures was awarded £24,500 (€24,500)for the adaptation of Vikram Seth’s third novel, An Equal Music, to be directed by Andrea Gibb (Dear Frankie); Richard Jobson’s new urban thriller New Town Killers was awarded £36,000 (€52,872); acclaimed Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg’s new project How I Live Now, written by Tony Grisony, received £76,964 (€113,044). The latter will be produced by Charles Steel (Passion Pictures) and Ali Flind (Prospect Entertainment), with co-financing from FilmFour.
Lastly, Pete Travis ( Omagh) will direct the WWII project Bomber, based on Len Deighton’s best-seller, for First Film Company and BBC Films. The project, scripted by Stuart Beattie (Collateral), received £68,500 (€100,612) in support.
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