June 17 2009

April 21 2009

April 21 2009

"I don’t think L.A. has changed at all," said Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote the book on which the film is based-about life in Los Angeles in 1983. "Well, I guess there's more smog and silicone, but that's about it."

February 12 2009
The Hollywood Reporter

BERLIN -- Arriving not a moment too soon, the light, effervescent "My One and Only" has brightened up Berlinale Competition screenings that were threatening to drown in a sea of sorrow over war crimes, racism and dysfunctional families. How the jury responds to this throwback to '50s-style Hollywood comedies is anybody's guess but general audiences should embrace this most amusing film. Richard Loncraine's movie is very much built for the mainstream but its wit and style probably will connect best with audiences over 25.

The film, written by Charlie Peters, is based on the childhood experiences of actor George Hamilton. When he was barely old enough to drive, he and his slightly older half brother found themselves being dragged around the country on a husband-shopping adventure by his tenacious mother.

Only mom -- played with sparkles of feminine allure, strong-minded determination and more than a little naivete by Renee Zellweger -- hasn't taken a good look at the calendar. It's 1953, not 1938, and the boys don't snap at bait that is getting older. Indeed the only fish she attracts are loonies and losers.

This Southern belle is still a beauty. But her sons are clever and smart so they sense disappointment around every corner. The audience does too but for once predictability doesn't work against a movie. It's really not so much predictability as destiny.

Logan Lerman plays George and in a sense he's the straight man here since brother Robbie, wonderfully played by Mark Rendall, is a real character too, a "sensitive" youth interested in sharp clothes and sharper wit. No one ever uttered the word gay in 1953.

Zellweger is the force of nature at the center of the film, but Lerman holds his own. He's clearly the only adult in the family and that includes his dad -- a bandleader who prefers the road and its temptations to family life -- played by Kevin Bacon with a Peter Pan twinkle in his eye. So Lerman anchors the film with wry observations and a quiet determination to not let this whirlwind of a mother pull him from his own life's course.

The film is episodic as it takes off from New York, hours after Ann Devereaux catches husband Dan with another woman, and hopscotches to Boston, then on to St. Louis, Phoenix and finally L.A., more or less following the old Route 66.

The flaws in Ann's men are almost too easily spotted. An old beau (Steven Weber) is in more trouble than Ann. An army doctor (Chris Noth) suffers from, as Robbie puts it, "battle fatigue." Another old admirer prefers much younger women and a paint store owner (David Koechner) has perhaps sniffed too much paint in his life.

The one interesting exception is a young man (Nick Stahl) in Pittsburgh, living in the same building, who looks like he's modeled himself after James Dean but turns out to be a true gentleman.

Peter's lightning-fast script and Loncraine's steady direction steer this road picture to the sunny side of the street. You laugh, not worry, about this family at risk. You're not meant to wonder where what little money they do have comes from and whether Ann bothered getting a divorce before accepting so many proposals not matter how bogus.

An asbestos salesman the trio picks up, raving about his product, catches the spirit of the film: This is a look back at a comic adventure from the vantage point of time and knowing better. Asbestos turned out to be dangerous and so does the concept that this tight-knit family needs an outsider to take care of them. What they really experience is the adventure of a lifetime.

Production companies: Herrick Entertainment, Raygun, Merv Griffin Entertainment and George Hamilton Productions Cast: Renee Zellweger, Logan Lerman, Kevin Bacon, Troy Gerity, David Koechner, Eric McCormack, Chris Noth

Director: Richard Loncraine

Screenwriter: Charlie Peters

Producers: Ronnie Ward, Robert Pritchard, Robert Kosberg. Aaron Ryder, Norton Herrick

Executive producers: George Hamilton, Elayne Herrick, Michael Herrick

Director of photography: Marco Pontecorvo

Production designer: Brian Morris

Music: Mark Isham

Costume designer: Doug Hall

Editor: Humphrey Dixon

Sales: Essential Entertainment

No rating, 108 minute

January 28 2009
The Hollywood Reporter

BERLIN -- Richard Loncraine's "My One and Only," a '50s-era comedy starring Renee Zellweger and Kevin Bacon, was squeezed into the competition lineup for this year's Berlin International Film Festival, barely a week before the event kicks off.

Zellweger plays a glamorous single mom on the hunt for a rich man to foot the bill for her and her sons' lifestyle. Produced by Merv Griffith Entertainment and Ray Gun Prods., "My One and Only" will have its world premiere in Berlin. Essential Entertainment is handling international sales.

Berlin also added Lone Scherfig's Sundance favorite "An Education" with Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina and Emma Thompson and Davis Guggenheim's music documentary "It Might Get Loud" for its Berlinale Special Galas, ensuring the films will get the red carpet treatment without any of the pressure of competition.

All three films should give an added boost of star power to what was already shaping up to be a high-wattage Berlinale. Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Clive Owen, Michelle Pfeiffer, Demi Moore, Parker Posey, Keanu Reeves, Gael Garcia Bernal and Steve Buscemi are just a sampling of the talent expected to attend.

"I don't think I'll be alone on the red carpet," Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick joked as he unveiled the final festival lineup on Tuesday. He added that at least one of the three guitarists featured in "It Might Get Loud" -- Jimmy Page, Jack White and the Edge -- would also make an appearance.

Tom Tykwer's "The International" will open the 59th Berlinale, and Costa-Gavras' "Eden Is West" will close it. The 2009 festival runs Feb. 5-15.

January 21 2009
The Hollywood Reporter

Q&A: Ed Zwick

By Jay A. Fernandez

Jan 20, 2009, 07:42 PM ET A master of the historical epic, director-producer Ed Zwick has brought a panoramic eye to the Civil War ("Glory"), the untamed American West ("Legends of the Fall"), the first Gulf War ("Courage Under Fire") and late 19th century Japan ("The Last Samurai"). So perhaps World War II and the Holocaust were inevitable. In his ninth feature as a helmer, "Defiance," Zwick co-wrote (with Clayton Frohman) the adaptation of the remarkable story of the Bielski brothers, who miraculously survived the Nazi onslaught in Eastern Europe while building a thousand-strong Jewish community in the forest of their childhood. The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Zwick about the changing landscapes of TV and film -- between which he's hopscotched for 25 years -- and how he finally got backing for a Holocaust movie 12 years in the making.

The Hollywood Reporter: Apparently, every studio passed on "Defiance," even with Daniel Craig attached. How did you convince financiers to give you $32 million for this kind of film?

Ed Zwick: I was lucky in that the last couple of movies that I had made had done particularly well in Europe. Europe is a place where more serious films still have a role as culture. And I guess it was the combination of those most recent films that I had done having performed, and Daniel's sudden new apotheosis as James Bond, and possibly that the subject matter was European, that the combination of those things gave us enough money.

THR: If you had a few sentences to tell people why they should give this particular film a look, what would you say?

Zwick: It offers an alternate view of history that people thought they knew with a story that no one knew. The Holocaust canon has been an iconography made up only of images of Jewish passivity and victimization. Necessarily and inevitably, in the name of memorializing six million lost, there has also been an overshadowing of those who survived and how they survived. I also think -- this occurred to me just recently -- now in the United States we're going to have to deal with a certain amount of sacrifice, we're going to have to give up a certain amount of our sense of entitlement or comfort. And to look at people who reckoned with something beyond our imagining and yet held on to their culture and their spirit of life, maybe that's particularly inspiring now.

THR: "Defiance" was bumped to 2009. How did you feel about that?

Zwick: It was distressing. It was clearly a factor of the credit crisis. And I think "The Soloist" was ill-treated in terms of being just pushed and pushed. A movie that's released in the fourth quarter '08 has to account for that expenditure in the fourth quarter '08. But the returns don't come in until '09. And the decision was finally based on wanting the majority of the spend to come out in the same quarter as the returns. It affects the stock price. So it was simply a bottom-line decision. And like it or not, I have to admit that I'm in a bottom-line business.

THR: Do you think you could make a movie like "About Last Night..." now?

Zwick: I definitely think I could make a movie like "About Last Night..." now. I'm not sure I could make a movie like "Glory" now, or even "Courage Under Fire" or "The Siege." It's not that they're challenging, it's that they're made at a certain scale. Even "Blood Diamond" I'm not sure I could get made right now. The interesting movies can definitely still be made but on a very small scale. The idea of putting that many resources to a story that might only make a certain amount of money is not what the studios want. They want movies that will move the stock price or justify giving up one of their tentpole slots. "About Last Night..." was made for eight million bucks.

THR: Is there a project that you've been attached to that you couldn't get going that you most wish you had?

Zwick: There's a wonderful script that ("Eastern Promises" writer) Steve Knight has written. He's written something for us, and it's called "Woman Walks Ahead." It's taken us a while because we can't find the right cast for it. And we will do it someday.

January 15 2009
CNN

While the horrors inflicted by the Nazis during World War II are well documented, "Defiance" director Edward Zwick wanted to make sure the stories of those who fought back aren't overlooked.

Liev Schreiber, left, and Daniel Craig play freedom fighters in "Defiance."

"There is this misperception that the Jews only went willingly to the slaughter," Zwick said. "And in fact, the new history and scholarship tells us that there was so much resistance. This is just one instance."

His new film, which goes into wide release Friday, tells the tale of the three Bielski brothers, who led a Jewish resistance group after escaping into the woods of Belarus in Eastern Europe.

The movie stars Daniel Craig -- best known for his work as the latest James Bond -- Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell as the trio who took up arms against the Nazis and helped save the lives of more than 1,000 Jewish refugees fleeing occupied Poland.

Portraying a slice of Jewish history was somewhat familiar territory for Craig, who plays brother Tuvia Bielski in the movie. He also co-starred as an Israeli agent in Steven Spielberg's "Munich," the dramatization of the murder of 11 athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. Craig said the characters' religion had nothing to do with his interest; both roles were just fascinating parts that attracted him.

"I think someone said, 'You did something similar to that in 'Munich,' " he recalled. "I said, well it's kind of not. It's a different period in history and I don't think religion is something that should hold me back." Watch Craig talk about the movie's power »

Schreiber, who is Jewish, said bringing the story of the heroic yet complex brothers to the big screen gave him "a sense of pride" and he found inspiration in their bravery.

"It was in these guys' DNA," said Schreiber, who plays Zus Bielski. "But I also think that it is in our DNA as human beings ... that courage exists, that passion exists, that tenacity to love exists. It's just that we don't experience the kinds of tests nowadays that they did in the 1930s in Eastern Europe -- particularly if you were Jewish."

Filming in Lithuania just across the border from Belarus added an element of realism to the role, Schreiber said.

"We shot in the woods in the middle of winter, but I think as an actor you're always grateful of these little reminders of where you are and what you're doing, especially when you're doing something on film when it's so naturalistic," he said. "When your hands are frozen and you can barely load a machine gun then you know you're on to something with the character."

Jamie Bell, best known for playing the title role in "Billy Elliot," rounds out the cast as younger brother Asael Bielski. He said the bleak setting helped him understand "the minutiae of what these people actually went through."

Bell had considered himself pretty knowledgeable about the Holocaust and World War II before learning about the project. "But when I read the script I felt kind of embarrassed that I didn't know about the Bielski brothers and about the Jewish resistance across the board," he said.

Heralding the triumph of the Bielski brothers to those who are unaware is just what director Zwick had in mind. He also had a hand in writing the "Defiance" screenplay and is no stranger to heroes in history, having directed the critically acclaimed "Glory." With this new film, Zwick said he found inspiration in the courage displayed by the Bielskis, who were fighting against incredible odds.

"You know, that's what's beautiful about their story," he said. "They were unprepared. They were unsophisticated; nothing they had ever done would have led one to expect that they were capable of this. I think that speaks to all of us: what we are able to find within us that is fine, even magnificent within ourselves when called upon."

January 14 2009
Variety

James Bond arrived in Gotham Monday, but 007 talk was put aside as Daniel Craig discussed his latest pic, "Defiance," at Monday's premiere. Craig talked up the film on the red carpet but skipped the crowded after-party at Thompson LES Hotel, where co-stars Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell mingled with guests.

At the soiree, helmer Edward Zwick said the pic, based on a 1993 book by Nechama Tec about a band of Jewish brothers who led a resistance movement against the Nazis during WWII, took over a decade to get off the ground. Zwick cited the script as the main reason for the delay.

"The first version covered three years (of the story), and it took a while to rewrite it and learn how to tell it properly," he said.

The preem came on the heels of the Golden Globes, where the film was nominated in just one category -- original score -- but Zwick said he wasn't upset.

"When you have done this as many times as I have, you realize that you get praised sometimes and sometime you are casually disregarded. You just have to go with it."

January 14 2009
Variety

In 1995, Gregor Jordan skipped his first Sundance when his Cannes award-winning short ``Swinger'' screened. But he was invited back three more times.

He first made the trip to Utah in 1999 for the world premiere of his debut feature, ``Two Hands,'' a teen crime thriller starring a then-unknown Heath Ledger, but all chances of a U.S. release were destroyed later when the Columbine massacre made anything involving kids and gun violence taboo subject matter.

In 2003, Jordan returned with yet another controversial pic, ``Buffalo Soldier,'' a dark comedy about corrupt U.S. soldiers whose release had been delayed for two years because of Sept. 11.

This year, Jordan brings the ``The Informers,''an adaptation of the short-story collection by Bret Easton Ellis (who co-wrote the pic with Nicholas Jarecki). Senator will distribute the pic Stateside.

``I feel less pressure about Sundance this year, not just because I've been through it before, but because we're not arriving with our hats in our hands trying to sell it,'' Jordan says.

January 8 2009
The Hollywood Reporter

One of the most promising indie films this winter has U.S. rights available, features several stars, is represented by CAA and already has buyers circling. It sounds like a top Sundance Film Festival hopeful, except for one thing -- it isn't going to Sundance.

"My One and Only," a period romantic dramedy starring Renee Zellweger and Kevin Bacon, has been screening for buyers the past few weeks in the hope of sealing a deal before the first parkas are zipped up in Utah. The film, about a 1950s single mother in search of a wealthy suitor, is classic Sundance bait, but filmmakers and reps decided against taking the mid-range-budgeted film to Park City.

Instead, they believe a more deliberate rollout to buyers will serve the film's interests better than a high-profile fest screening. While they might be sacrificing the chance for a bidding war, they also avoid the possibility that the movie's value will plummet if that first screening doesn't start a fire -- in other words, if it plays like most festival movies have this past year.

"You take a movie to Sundance, there's an expectation," says a sales agent at another firm. "You're running uphill. Show a movie in L.A. and you're running downhill."

There are, to be sure, movies with the requisite big names and big promise coming to Park City this year. A Jim Carrey dramedy ("I Love You Phillip Morris") and an Antoine Fuqua cop thriller ("Brooklyn's Finest") could easily have been studio movies, but because of plot particulars (gay themes and grittiness, respectively) became Sundance acquisition targets. Ashton Kutcher's off-kilter raunch comedy "Spread" and Kevin Spacey's drama "Shrink" also have strong prefestival hype.

If things break right, movies like these could provoke pricey bids from studios looking to avoid the creative risks -- and production costs -- of making the films themselves.

But if these titles don't ignite bidding wars -- which, given the recent state of the indie marketplace, wouldn't be surprising -- the disappointment could accelerate a shift toward the "One and Only" model.

"We're starting to screen stuff more and more outside of festivals," said Cinetic Media topper John Sloss, in part, he says, because "I'm more unsure about the market than I've ever been." Sloss this year opted to take James Ivory's new film, which he is repping, to execs directly instead of taking it to Park City. Sony Pictures Classics began negotiating to acquire "Rudo y Cursi," a Spanish-language film directed by Carlos Cuaron and starring Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal, more than a week before its planned Sundance premiere.

The new attitudes are enough to cause sellers and distributors to start asking what was an unthinkable question even a few years ago: What if Sundance isn't about the sales anymore?

"There's nothing that says that Sundance has to be the Andover or Exeter for the specialty film business's Harvards and Yales," says longtime producer and sales rep Jonathan Dana.

Recent history suggests that the Ivy League of distributors is indeed looking elsewhere. There wasn't a Sundance boxoffice hit to be found last year; the two major sales -- "Hamlet 2," which went to Focus Features, and "Choke," which Fox Searchlight bought -- both underperformed.

In fact, there hasn't been a robust festival market by conventional definitions since Cannes in 2007 (though Toronto pickups like "The Visitor" last year and "The Wrestler" this year have provided glimmers of hope). In the meantime, many specialty divisions have either closed or cut back.

Add it all up, and many are drastically downsizing their expectations before they arrive in Park City. "There may be three or four big sales -- or there may barely be one," says one acquisitions exec. "Neither would surprise me."

The reason to expect a chillier sales climate has as much to do with production trends as it does the market itself. The indie world is already beginning to see filmmaking contract as financiers cut back amid the economic and credit crises. The prospect of lower sales returns at festival markets might shrink ambitions even further.

"If there are people paying $200,000 for the rights to a movie, then some of those movies can no longer be made, or they have to be made for $200,000," says Senator president of distribution and ThinkFilm veteran Mark Urman. "Which means a lot of Sundance staples may no longer get made."

Those that do could soon have a tougher time not just finding a sale, but finding a sales agent. One sales rep says he turned down a dark film even though the director has a stellar reputation. "In earlier years, I would have been all over it like a cheap suit," the agent says. "Now I'm hoping it goes to another rep. It was not an easy sell whatsoever in good times. It certainly won't be now."

The rhythms of the calendar and fest organizers' sharp eye for quality assures that there will always be sales at Sundance. But it might be that the business is entering a phase in which debuts are measured not in terms of their dollar value, but in the value of their discovery.

Two of the most prominent movies to emerge from the festival last year were "Frozen River" and "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired." The former announced the arrival of talent like director Courtney Hunt and star Melissa Leo; the latter has had an enduring cultural life, bolstering the reputation of director Marina Zenovich and having an impact on Polanski's long-running court case.

Sony Pictures Classics and the team of HBO/ThinkFilm, which acquired the respective pictures for modest pricetags, will both earn decent ancillary revenue from their purchases, if not overwhelming boxoffice. But what these breakouts show is that the fest's main value might now lie in the classic indie model, in which little money is spent and little is earned. The payoff comes in the form of critical cachet and awards, not in a "Little Miss Sunshine"-style plug-and-play blockbuster. It's a switch that takes the fest back to its emergence two decades ago, when movies like "sex, lies & videotape" were championed not as possible crossover hits but as giving rise to directorial talent and even a new style of filmmaking.

Such a shift would dovetail, in a sense, with the festival's own ambitions. While organizers haven't voiced outright opposition to the sales market as they have with swag and ambush marketing, they have had an ambivalent relationship with it: Organizers like the heat and industry attendance it brings but privately worry that it puts the emphasis on the big sale instead of the great film.

If Sundance were to return to its roots, documentaries could be the canary in this coal mine. Gone is the market of even two years ago, when compelling nonfiction stories like "My Kid Could Paint That" or "In the Shadow of the Moon" drew bidders who readily paid $1.5 million or $2 million for the right to release them. (Last year's lone big doc sale, the $700,000-priced "American Teen," sunk at the boxoffice for Paramount Vantage, which could further cool this year's market.)

Still, Sundance offers plenty of movies that could get small distributors and cinephiles excited, from Tom DiCillo's doc on the Doors ("When You're Strange") to the Fisher Stevens-produced environmental mystery "The Cove." They probably won't sell for a lot, but they might be the titles that this year's fest is remembered for.

Changes are afoot all over Park City. Just ask Jeffrey Best, who for years operated swag suites at the centrally located Town Lift but who this year will run a toned-down site in official conjunction with the festival there instead.

"It's necessary to change the model to stand out in a cluttered environment," says Best, a man who once helped cultivate the corporate and celebrity sides of Sundance. This year, Best is offering less flash and more substance. Outside the Lift, expect the same.

January 7 2009
The Hollywood Reporter

Bulgaria and Romania might get all the attention when it comes to filming in Eastern Europe, but Lithuania is getting its moment in the sun thanks to "Defiance."

The Ed Zwick-directed World War II resistance movie revolves around three Jewish Belorussian brothers who fought the Nazis and built a community in the Naliboki Forest outside of Novgorodok.

For political reasons, Zwick and his crew did not go to Belarus -- the country basically is a dictatorship, with the same president since 1994 -- but found the next best thing in neighboring Lithuania, where the entire movie was shot.

Not only that, but the movie lensed almost entirely in the forest, with hardly any stage work at all.

The production was based in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius, only 150-200 kilometers from where the actual story took place. The filmmakers found locations within an hour's drive from the city.

"The forests are the same, the swamps are the same, it's the same geography," Zwick says.

Vilnius had a Jewish quarter that was decimated during World War II and had mass graves in the forest that are now memorial sites.

"With Ed, what you strive for is an authenticity to (a production)" says producer Pieter Jan Brugge, who worked with Zwick on "Glory" and whose producing credits include "Heat" and "Miami Vice." "What can be more authentic than going to the heart of where the story took place?"

Shooting in and around Vilnius also allowed Slavic actors to be cast in smaller, Russian-speaking roles and made it possible to cast extras who were descendants from the families the brothers saved.

Of course, shooting in the forest was no walk in the park. The actors and crew drove to the outskirts of the woods but had to hike in to the actual set. Fall had settled in (the movie shot from August-December 2007), which meant cold, wet, gray weather and low light.

"Daniel (Craig) says I did that on purpose," Zwick says.

The director says he didn't but admits it helped. "Actors are always looking for verisimilitude, and they were able to hold on to the rain and the cold for their performance," he says. "It's ineffable but it was real, and it helped the performance. I really believe that."

Cold was a definite factor, and though there was fake snow (actually, it was a biodegradable paper product supplied by a company called Snow Business) real snow also was on the ground many days, forcing actors to huddle around fires and crew to seek solace in zemlyankas -- partially underground wooden bunkers the set designers built in the process of re-creating the forest village.

"When you are under these adverse circumstances, people tend to bond, and this is a movie that is about community," Zwick says. "We formed our own community."

The conditions also kept the actors and crew members humble. Jan Brugge says that they arrived at the base camp in the morning, "lived" in the forest for the day, then went back to the hotel. "But those who lived through this did not," he says. "We have on parkas and have a catering truck, and so you are always thinking of what it was for these people to survive for all those years under those circumstances."

Lithuania's film industry remains in the nascent stage compared with its bigger brothers Bulgaria and Romania; the infrastructure and limited soundstages are more geared toward television work and indie movies. "Elizabeth I," the HBO miniseries starring Helen Mirren, shot in Vilnius, and the recent indie thriller "Transsiberian" also found a home there.

"Defiance," budgeted at about $35 million, was the first big production for the country.

Although there were headaches involving bureaucracy and cultural differences, Jan Brugge thinks the film shoot helped Lithuania.

"I think any time that a (movie) company comes into a country where there is a deficiency, it adds tremendous experience to the growth of a film industry," he says.

January 4 2009
THe Hollywood Reporter

James Newton Howard, "Defiance"

Director: Ed Zwick

Director's orders: Ed's terrific to work with, very musical, and music's very important to him. He's respectful of the music and plays it prominently in the mix. And he's a great action director, really underrated, so there are always lots of things to work with.

The big theme: We tried some things with clarinet, and at first that played very well. And then we explored the idea of cello, and the place we ended up last was violin. We were very cautious about that because it's been done before, and it's been done brilliantly in "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Schindler's List," and it's had a great presence in stories of Jews in World War II. My position was, it wasn't the instrument, it was what you wrote for it. So after a few demos we decided the violin was a great place to go.

Key scene: There was a scene where (the Polish Jews) were escaping the ghetto early on and Daniel Craig's character is trying to talk them into leaving and coming into the forest. Ed shot this beautiful scene where they take off the stars that were sewn onto their clothing and drop them into a little pile on the floor. I worked on that scene early on and it wasn't working, and the reason it wasn't working was I hadn't come up with the theme for the movie. I was trying to find the language of the movie and got very frustrated, and I'm sure I said to Ed at some point that I wasn't the guy to do this movie, and Ed sent me a very encouraging e-mail -- and so I did it eventually.

December 30 2008
Variety

Defiance is One of Final Two Releases of 08'.

Coming in under the wire for awards consideration, the two final releases of 2008 are Paramount Vantage's "Defiance," directed by Ed Zwick, and ThinkFilm's Viggo Mortensen starrer "Good."

The two films -- both Holocaust dramas -- will open in limited runs on Wednesday.

"Defiance," whose release was pushed back from early fall, toplines Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber. Film is based on the true story of four brothers in Eastern Europe who escaped with scores of Jews, built a city and fought the Nazis.

"Good," directed by Vicente Amorim, tells the story of a German professor who unwittingly becomes a member of the SS.

"Defiance" and "Good" will have plenty of competition, considering the bevy of specialty titles already in the market. In terms of tone, there is also direct competition: Tom Cruise starrer "Valkyrie," which opened Christmas Day.

Elsewhere at the B.O., studios are hoping for big grosses throughout this week and into the weekend after a robust Christmas weekend led by Fox's Jennifer Aniston-Owen Wilson comedy "Marley and Me."

Domestic box office revenues continue to run even with last year's record-breaking take of $9.63 billion. Admissions, however, are down 4%-5%.

Distributors and exhibitors say they aren't concerned about the dip, considering the economic crisis, which has produced huge plunges in other sectors, including retail and automobile sales, and a staggering drop in crude oil prices. They say the admissions decline is relatively soft in comparison.

Over the past decade, admissions have gone up and down. The biggest drop came in 2005, when theater traffic dipped 7.27%. In 2004, admissions dropped 2.43%, and in 2003, 4.87%. Admissions were up 1.38% in 2006 and 0.35% in 2007, according to the National Assn. of Theater Owners.

In 2008 alone, there have been substantial swings. Admissions were up 10% for most of the fall season and the middle part of the summer.

That box office revenues are even with last year is due to increased ticket prices. The average ticket price year to date is $7.20, compared with $6.88 in 2007. The average price for 2008 could go down once final-quarter numbers are crunched.

NATO says comparisons can be tough when the previous year has seen the sort of blockbuster sequels and three-quels that 2007 enjoyed.

December 22 2008
New York Observer

Heroes of the Holocaust

“This story is amazing in its own right … apart from being a Holocaust story. That’s important, I think,” said director Edward Zwick recently, sitting on the sunny rooftop of the Gramercy Park Hotel. The 56-year-old director was in town to discuss his latest film, Defiance, the incredible true story of the Bielski brothers, who hid in the forests of Belarus during World War II, fighting off the Nazis, and were responsible for saving over 1,200 Jewish lives. The movie, which stars Mr. James Bond, Daniel Craig; new daddy Liev Schrieber; and little Billy Elliot (all grown up!), Jamie Bell, opens at the Ziegfeld on Dec. 31 before opening nationwide on Jan. 16.

The previous evening, Mr. Zwick had screened the film for relatives of the Bielskis, in addition to other Holocaust survivors and their families, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City. It was an emotional two hours, punctuated with audible sniffling, and cheers during the courageous battle scenes. One of the more striking things about seeing any film set during that horrific period is the realization that, in the grand scheme of things, 1941 just wasn’t that long ago. With that in mind, Mr. Zwick spent the day taking portrait photographs of the survivors. “These people that I was with yesterday, they are in the 11th hour,” he said. “I was very close to my grandfather, and after he died, I didn’t realize how much I missed that sound, that shtetl accent. Within 5 or 10 years, that sound will be gone, as well as any living witness.” He paused. “That’s the thing about Jews, is that memory and the repetition of memory is central to the culture. That’s what the Passover Seder is: the retelling. I think that oral tradition has been accountable for the survival of these people.”

The film was a hard one to make, both emotionally and physically, with the cast and crew spending five long, cold months in Lithuanian forests. “The interesting thing about it was that when you are in a hard place, the company tends to bond,” Mr. Zwick said. “We were all sort of there for one another.” The dashing Mr. Craig (playing a Jew for the second time!) was an actor Mr. Zwick had met when casting his last movie, Blood Diamond. “I liked him, but the studio was basically like, ‘Who’s he?’” (Needless to say, this was before Mr. Craig was a.k.a. James Bond.) “Or they said, yeah, you can make it—we’ll give you 12 dollars,” Mr. Zwick laughed. About a year later, on his way to Africa to shoot Blood Diamond (with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly), Mr. Zwick found himself on the same flight to England as Mr. Craig. They had a nice conversation, and by the end of the flight, Mr. Zwick had him firmly in mind for when he finished the Defiance script. “Daniel is a wonderful fellow. He’s a working-class actor who happens to be a big movie star now. Five minutes into this [Defiance], you forget all about James Bond.”

Like many of the director’s past films (Glory, Legends of the Fall, The Last Samurai), Defiance is big and beautiful, almost old-fashionedly so, unafraid to nudge at your emotions.

“A lot of people find fault with that,” said Mr. Zwick. “I think we go to the movies to cathart and be transported, but there are some people who are suspicious of that,” he said. “I think there’s been a tilt in modern criticism that feels that any kind of emotionality is by nature manipulative and that that’s exploitive in some way. It’s how the theater began, it was its purpose … and I am unapologetic. I think there’s a certain admiration for things that are more flinty and unsentimental, defiantly unsentimental. I’m not sure people understand that to reach genuine deep feeling, when earned, is extremely difficult.”

Surprisingly, Defiance also has sprinkled moments of grim humor. “People ask about that and my response is always, well, they’re Jews,” said the (obviously) Jewish director with a grin. “They’re funny and they’re dark—the darker the humor, the better.” The Illinois-raised Mr. Zwick, who was educated at both Harvard and the American Film Institute, now resides in Santa Monica with his family. Did working on this film make him feel more connected to his faith? “Faith … and the Holocaust is a very tricky subject,” he said. “Connected to a people and a tradition, yes, certainly. It’s one thing to try to reckon the immensity of the Holocaust from afar, it’s quite another to be up close in any way and come to understand just what it was.” He paused. “Vilnius [in Lithuania] is this beautiful city, but it’s been cleansed … and it’s ghoulish, and then you think about how many other cities that this has happened and one just can’t help but feel … there but for the grace of God.”

December 16 2008
Hollywood Reporter

By Todd Longwell

When it comes to adapting literary works for the big screen, British playwright David Hare says, one must be promiscuous to be faithful.

"You can't simply step your way through a book with perfect fidelity. If you do, the whole thing is completely dead," Hare argues. His principle was employed to varying degrees by all of this year's leading contenders for the adapted screenplay Oscar -- including Hare himself, who translated Bernhard Schlink's novel "The Reader" (Weinstein Co.) into script form.

Hare says the primary challenge with "The Reader" was the same one presented by most novels: the unspoken interior monologue in which characters freely express their thoughts. "In cinema, there really isn't any equivalent to that, unless you use voice-over," observes Hare, who earned an Oscar nomination for his 2002 adaptation of the Michael Cunningham novel "The Hours." "Personally, I hate voice-over. I hate an actor droning at me, telling me all sorts of things that the screenwriter is too lazy to make obvious by writing scenes."

One of the ways screenwriter Justin Haythe gave voice to the internal turmoil of '50s suburbanite Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) in his adaptation of Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road" (DreamWorks/Paramount Vantage) was by taking a scene from the novel in which the character seduces a naive secretary over the course of a drunken lunch and adding an emotional rant, which simultaneously communicates his frustration with the humdrum conformity of his life and the backstory of his relationship with his father.

"I don't think Frank would ever let his guard down, except at that moment with this girl," Haythe says. "In the book, you'd get this information by being given access to his internal life."

Hare says his principal invention for "The Reader" was a vehicle for the main character, Michael (played alternately by David Kross and Ralph Fiennes), to unburden himself of the secret he'd been carrying for decades about a teenage affair with an older woman (Kate Winslet) later accused of Nazi war crimes. Schlink has him do it by writing a book. But writing is hardly cinematic, "and he can't decide to tell it by making a film," Hare says, so he has Michael reveal his secret in a conversation with his adult daughter.

"Like all good adaptation ideas, it's suggested by the novel," Hare says. "Or I should say, I don't think the novelist will feel it's false to the novel." There was a great deal more promiscuity involved in Simon Beaufoy's translation of Vikas Swarup's novel "Q&A" into the script for Fox Searchlight's "Slumdog Millionaire." But in the end it led him to true love.

Like the movie, the book is about a slum kid (Dev Patel) who gets arrested on suspicion of fraud after he wins big on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" then uses a series of elaborate tales to explain how he answered each question. But, says Beaufoy, "the book, while wonderful, is effectively a series of short stories. There's a story about an Australian spy; a fading Bollywood star; one all about religion -- but there's no real through narrative, no spine, which you absolutely have to have in a film."

Beaufoy traveled to the Indian metropolis of Mumbai in search of answers. Wandering around the slums for weeks, he came to realize that, in spite of the rampant poverty, it was a very romantic, passionate culture.

"I thought, 'It's got to be a love story,'" Beaufoy says. "So I invented this character of Latika (played by Freida Pinto) and then had to work backwards and get a whole new set of stories that would work with this quest for a long lost love."

The need for invention was even greater with "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (Paramount), based on a tale by F. Scott Fitzgerald that was originally published in Collier's magazine in 1922.

"The short story was a jumping-off point," says "Button" screenwriter Eric Roth, who won an Oscar for the 1994 adaptation of Winston Groom's novel "Forrest Gump." "Fitzgerald is certainly a better writer than I could ever hope to be, but I'm not sure he invested his whole soul into it. It's very farcical. He was just enjoying the idea."

Roth responded by investing his own soul into the script, drawing upon his experiences as a father and grandfather, along with the recent passing of his mother, which inspired the framing device of an 85-year-old woman on her deathbed.

The brevity of the source material necessitated numerous other additions and alterations. The adventures of Button (Brad Pitt) in the movie don't exist in the short story and vice versa. Roth also changed all names (except Benjamin's), added characters and pushed the time frame forward roughly 60 years to the mid-late 20th century.

In contrast to "Button," the source material for "Defiance" (Paramount Vantage) is long and deadly serious. "Defiance: The Bielski Partisans" by Nechama Tec is a 426-page account of 1,250 Jewish men, women and children who waged an underground battle against the Nazis from a Belarusian forest. While the basic history covered in the book could not be drastically altered, screenwriters Clayton Frohman and Edward Zwick (who also directed) were able to winnow down its look at the group and larger conflict in Eastern Europe to concentrate on the three Bielski brothers at the center of the story (played by Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell).

"It's not really a narrative; it's more of a 'university press'-type of book," explains Frohman, who has known Zwick since they were boys growing up in Chicago. "And it's not a Harry Potter book with fans who are going to expect the movie to be a copy. It provided us with information, but it allowed us freedom to be dramatists. It was like you have a huge piece of clay or wood and you sculpt it down. We kept the basic framework of the brothers, but we did combine, invent and compress a number of different historical characters."

In one instance, they took a real-life figure, Lazar Malbin, and split him into two characters: Lazar (Jonjo O'Neill) and Malbin (Mark Feuerstein).

"They organized themselves like a military unit, and the real Lazar Malbin was their chief of intelligence," Frohman explains. "In our story, Malbin is not necessarily the chief of intelligence, but he becomes a confidant to Tuvia (Craig), and the Lazar character became more comic relief."

In "Che" (IFC Films), a sprawling four-hour-plus epic adapted from the diaries of guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Benicio Del Toro), screenwriter Peter Buchman's creation of a single fictional composite character -- Alejandro Ramirez (Yul Vazquez), a Cuban working for the CIA -- lent a gestalt to the film's entire dramatic arc.

Says Buchman: "We start tracking (Alejandro) in the Cuban Revolution, and he basically follows Che through New York (where he addresses the U.N.), and then ends up tracking him down in Bolivia (where he meets his demise)." Buchman says the creation of Alejandro "sort of brought the whole movie together for me. It was one of those moments when I was finally able to crack the structure."

Peter Morgan dealt with two kinds of history in "Frost/Nixon" (Universal): the real events of the televised showdown between former President Richard M. Nixon (Frank Langella) and TV personality David Frost (Michael Sheen); and the legacy of his original play, which garnered rave reviews and packed houses in New York and London with the same actors in the lead roles. Morgan was initially dismissive of the latter.

"My instinct was to dismantle the whole thing in the script," says Morgan, who earned an Oscar nomination for his original screenplay for 2006's "The Queen."

Acting on this impulse, he removed the narration that frames the play from the first draft of the script. But director Ron Howard quickly swooped in and encouraged Morgan to salvage it.

"He looked at the first 30 pages and felt that it was missing the soul of what it was," Morgan says. "If you take the narration out in any shape or form, it takes out many of the points that are critical to the enjoyment of 'Frost/Nixon' -- observations about politics and the way television works. It would've been very difficult to introduce those things seamlessly into conversation."

The solution devised by Morgan and Howard was to take the narration, which in the play had been divided between one man in the Nixon camp and one in the Frost camp, and spread it among the cast in a series of interview snippets set five years after the televised showdown.

While screenwriters typically struggle to "open up" a story designed for the confines of a stage, Morgan says it was not a problem with "Frost/Nixon."

"David Frost had three talk shows going on simultaneously -- in Australia, New York and London -- and the interviews themselves took place in California," Morgan points out. "Just by shooting in the locations that it actually happened, immediately you've got a movie with more air miles than a Bond film."

It wasn't so easy for writer-director John Patrick Shanley when he set out to adapt his play "Doubt" (Miramax) for the big screen. The story, about a priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) suspected of improper contact with a Catholic schoolboy in 1964, provided little room for expansion except to add scenes with the students (including the boy, played by Joseph Foster), none of whom are shown in the play. Shanley's solution was to insert small cinematic touches wherever he could.

"I treated the micro events of daily life as major events," explains Shanley, who won an original screenplay Oscar for 1987's "Moonstruck." "A breeze coming in the window, or a phone ringing, or somebody opening the blinds -- all of these things are moments in the film, and the movie is rife with them."

"I couldn't do things that simply caused interest but actually had nothing to do with the narrative," Shanley adds. That said, he admits, "I used every stinking trick I could."

December 5 2008
Hollywood Reporter

By Gregg Kilday

Fox Searchlight's "Slumdog Millionaire," Danny Boyle's tale of a Mumbai orphan who beats the odds, was named best film of the year by the National Board of Review.

The New York-based organization, which is always one of the first out of the gate with year-end film kudos, bestowed its best actor honors on Clint Eastwood, who plays an ex-Marine at war with a changing world in "Gran Torino," and its best actress honors on Anne Hathaway, who appears as a disruptive, recovering addict in "Rachel Getting Married."

"Slumdog's" Dev Patel also was recognized for breakthrough performance by an actor. The film's screenwriter, Simon Beaufoy, was cited for best adapted screenplay, sharing that award with Eric Roth, who penned "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

The best original screenplay prize went to Nick Schenk for "Gran Torino."

"Button," the epic love story about a man whose life runs backwards, earned David Fincher the best director prize.

Supporting actor honors went to Josh Brolin, who plays the assassin Dan White in "Milk," and Penelope Cruz, who appears as a tempetuous divorcee in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."

Sergei Bodrov's "Mongol" was named best foreign-language film, while James Marsh's "Man on Wire" was singled out as best documentary.

Pixar/Disney's "WALL-E" walked off with the prize for best animated feature.

Miramax's "Doubt" earned the prize for best supporting cast, with its Viola Davis cited for breakthrough performance by an actress.

"Frozen River's" Melissa Leo, who just took top acting honors at the Gotham Awards, shared the Spotlight Award with "The Visitor's" Richard Jenkins. The Bvlgaricq Award for NBR Freedom of Expression went to Peter Askin's documentary "Trumbo." The NBR, which is comprised of 122 film buffs, academics, professionals and historians, also cited its top ten films of the year. In alphabetical order, they are "Burn After Reading," "Changeling," "Button," "The Dark Knight," "Defiance," "Frost/Nixon," "Torino," "Milk," "WALL-E" and "The Wrestler." Its five top foreign-language films are "Edge of Heaven," Let the Right One In," Roman de Gare," "A Secret" and "Waltz with Bashir."

Its top five docs are "American Teen," "The Betrayal" (Nerakhoon), "Dear Zachary," "Encounters at the End of the World" and "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired."

The group also gave its William K. Everson Film History Award to married film critics Molly Haskell and Andrew Sarris.

The awards will be presented at the NBR's annual gala on Jan. 14 at Cipriani's 42nd St. in New York.

November 23 2008
NY Times

Never Forget. You're Reminded. THIS holiday season the multiplexes, the art houses and the glossy for-your-consideration ads in publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter will be overrun with Nazis.

A minor incursion of this sort is an annual Oscar-season tradition, but 2008 offers an abundance of peaked caps and riding breeches, lightning-bolt collar pins and swastika armbands, as an unusually large cadre of prominent actors assumes the burden of embodying the most profound and consequential evil of the recent past.

David Thewlis, playing a death camp commandant in “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” will be joined by Willem Dafoe, who takes on a similar role in “Adam Resurrected,” Paul Schrader’s new film. In “The Reader,” directed by Stephen Daldry and based on Bernhard Schlink’s best-selling novel of the same name, Kate Winslet plays a former concentration camp guard tried for war crimes. Tom Cruise, the star of Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie,” wears the uniform of the Third Reich though his character, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, was not a true-believing Nazi but rather a patriotic German military officer involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

And of course there will be plenty of room on screen for the victims and survivors of Hitler’s regime. Adam, the title character in “Adam Resurrected,” is a Berlin nightclub performer, played by Jeff Goldblum, who finds himself, after enduring the camps, confined to an Israeli asylum somewhere between “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “King of Hearts.” And in Edward Zwick’s “Defiance,” Daniel Craig transmutes his James Bond action-heroism into the moral heroism of Tuvia Bielski, the real-life leader of a group of Jewish partisans who fought the Germans in the forests of Belarus. Meanwhile the wave of European cinema dealing with Nazism and the Holocaust — most prominently represented on American screens in recent years by “The Counterfeiters,” which won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film back in February, and earlier aspirants like “Downfall” and “Black Book” — continued this fall with the American releases of “A Secret” and “One Day You’ll Understand,” two quiet, powerful French-language films exploring themes of memory and its suppression.

The near-simultaneous appearance of all these movies is to some degree a coincidence, but it throws into relief the curious fact that early 21st-century culture, in Europe and America, on screen and in books, is intensely, perhaps morbidly preoccupied with the great political trauma of the mid-20th century.

The number of Holocaust-related memoirs, novels, documentaries and feature films in the past decade or so seems to defy quantification, and their proliferation raises some uncomfortable questions. Why are there so many? Why now? And more queasily, could there be too many?

The moral imperatives imposed by the slaughter of European Jews are Never Again and Never Forget, which mean, logically, that the story of the Holocaust must be repeated again and again. But the sheer scale of the atrocity — the six million extinguished lives and the millions more that were indelibly scarred, damaged and disrupted — suggests that the research, documentation and imaginative reconstruction, the building of memorials and museums, the writing of books and scripts, no matter how scrupulous and exhaustive, will necessarily be partial, inadequate and belated. And this tragic foreknowledge of insufficiency, which might be inhibiting, turns out, on the contrary, to spur the creation of more and more material.

Shortly after the war the German critic T. W. Adorno declared that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” This observation has frequently been interpreted, aphoristically, as a fiat of silence, a prohibition against the use of the ordinary tools of culture to address the extraordinary, inassimilable fact of genocide. But those tools, however crude, are what we have to work with. And if Adorno intended a warning against representations of the Holocaust, it has been more quoted than heeded.

The perception that this catastrophe overwhelms conventional aesthetic strategies and traditions has led to the creation of a remarkable range of formally innovative work, including the lyric poetry of Paul Celan, the early prose works of Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann’s epic documentary “Shoah,” Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” and Peter Eisenmann’s Berlin memorial to the Jewish victims of Nazism.

To describe these as masterpieces is not especially controversial, but it is also, as Adorno perhaps anticipated, somehow unseemly. If the Holocaust can inspire a great work of art, then it can also incubate the ambition to achieve such greatness, and thus open itself up, like everything else, to exploitation, pretense and vulgarity. Worse, the aura that still surrounds this topic — the sense that it must be treated with a special measure of tact and awe — can be appropriated by clumsy, sentimental and meretricious films or books, which protect themselves from criticism by a cloak of seriousness and piety. Thus the immodest indecency of a movie like Roberto Benigni’s Oscar-winning “Life Is Beautiful” was, during its initial period of triumph, deflected onto those with the temerity to criticize it. Those who resisted its manipulative juxtaposition of sweet, childlike innocence with barbarity were accused of lacking the gravity and sensitivity that Mr. Benigni’s travesty required.

And a similar defense is invoked, explicitly or implicitly, so routinely that it calls forth cynicism. Why do opportunistic, clever young novelists — I won’t name any names — gravitate toward magic-realist depictions of the decidedly unmagical reality of the Shoah? For the same reason that actors shave their heads and starve themselves, or preen and leer in jackboots and epaulets. For the same reason that filmmakers commission concrete barracks and instruct their cinematographers and lab technicians to filter out bright, saturated colors. To win prizes of course.

Ms. Winslet said as much on an episode of “Extras”: “I’ve noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust, you’re guaranteed an Oscar.” She was joking, of course, though her appearance in “The Reader” suggests that the joke is funny because it’s often true. Why else do you suppose all the movies listed at the beginning of this article, including “The Reader,” are coming out in November and December? Not because Hanukkah is coming.

Of course the line between kitsch and art is notoriously blurry, and in any case kitsch has its uses. The television miniseries “Holocaust” is nobody’s idea of a masterpiece, but its broadcast, in 1979, on West German state television was a decisive event in that nation’s reckoning with its culpability. It is estimated that more than half of the adult German population watched the series.

Subsequently, according to the historian Tony Judt, “Germans would be among the best-informed Europeans on the subject of the Shoah and at the forefront of all efforts to maintain public awareness of their country’s singular crime.” The French conscience may have been stirred by superior movies — “The Sorrow and the Pity,” “Shoah” — but France was much slower to acknowledge the full measure of its complicity.

And in this country “Schindler’s List” in 1993 was a similar watershed. Though the Holocaust was not a central event in American history, “Schindler’s List,” even more than “Holocaust,” made it into one by turning it into the basis of a Hollywood epic. Buying a ticket was treated almost a moral duty — “You have to see it. You have to!” nagged Jerry Seinfeld’s sitcom parents — and its Oscar-night triumph was staged as a grand collective catharsis.

“Schindler’s List” undoubtedly gave rise to a new pedagogical and commemorative impulse. It also, however, helped to domesticate the Holocaust by making it a fixture of American middlebrow popular culture. Which I don’t mean entirely as a criticism, since that culture is better than a lot of the alternatives. But Hollywood trades in optimism, redemption and healing, and its rendering of even the most appalling realities inevitably converts their dire facts into its own shiny currency.

Thus “Schindler’s List,” for all its unsparing and powerful re-creations of the horror of the Krakow ghetto, is a story of heroism, resilience and survival. And a great many of the mainstream Holocaust movies that have followed, including documentaries and some foreign films, have emphasized hope and overcoming rather than despair and destruction. When death dominates these films — as it does in “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” an apt successor to “Life Is Beautiful” — it is spiritualized and rendered aesthetically palatable by an overlay of maudlin sentiment.

More often the reality of mass death gives way to yet another affirmation of life, and even faithfully rendered true stories are bent into conformity with familiar patterns, themes and conventions: forbidden love; noble sacrifice; victory against the odds. The Holocaust is more accessible than ever, and more entertaining.

At the same time it is receding from living memory, which may by itself explain the recent burst of cinematic and literary interest. The movies I find most interesting, most authentic, either address this painful process directly, measuring the distance between our time and the 1930s and ’40s rather than recreating that era faithfully in every detail, or else cleave to the particulars of a single story. Thus Roman Polanski’s “Pianist” and Lajos Koltai’s “Fateless,” though both tales of survival, register the absurdity and abnormality of survival in the manner of the first-person literary works on which they are based.

“A Secret” and “One Day You’ll Understand” are meditations on what it means to remember. It is no coincidence that both take place in France, where the habit and policy of forgetting endured until quite recently. In those films, full of unresolved feelings of grief, tenderness and bewilderment, French Jews born after World War II try to figure out what the annihilation of their parents’ world means to them. In both cases the past is both painfully pressing and, mercifully but maddeningly, out of reach.

And in both cases the filmmakers explore not only strong feelings but also complicated ideas. The sensations associated with the Holocaust have become perhaps too easy to evoke, given the power of cinema to dispense fear, pity, sorrow and relief through sound, image and pageantry.

This has been the route taken by most English-language films about the Holocaust, and also some of their slick European counterparts, like “Black Book” and “The Counterfeiters.” But “A Secret” and “One Day You’ll Understand” represent another strain in European and Israeli film, one that may reflect a deeper cultural difference. In the United States the Holocaust is a mystery, a puzzle, and the obsessive interest in it testifies to its intrinsic strangeness. In France, in Germany and in Eastern Europe it remains an urgent problem that needs to be worked out — in art, in politics and in the society as a whole.

It seems right that movies about a difficult subject should themselves be difficult. But the fate of difficult movies with subtitles, usually, is to slip in and out of American theaters without leaving much of a trace. The big Holocaust movies of the big movie season will make more of an impression, allowing audiences vicarious immersion in a history that they nonetheless keep at a safe, mediated difference, even as they risk bathos and overreach in the process. We don’t have to ask what the Holocaust means to us since the movies answer that question for us.

For American audiences a Holocaust movie is now more or less equivalent to a western or a combat picture or a sword-and-sandals epic — part of a genre that has less to do with history than with the perceived expectations of moviegoers. This may be the only, or at least the most widely available, way of keeping the past alive in memory, but it is also a kind of forgetting.

November 7 2008
Screen Daily

Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group (SPWAG) has acquired domestic home entertainment and television distribution rights to Senator US's release slate.

Among the initial titles in the multi-picture deal are the thriller Unthinkable that is currently in production and stars Samuel L Jackson, Carrie-Anne Moss and Michael Sheen and the supernatural thriller Clock Tower, set to begin shooting in Los Angeles on December.

The roster includes the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Informers starring Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke and Winona Ryder, as well as Fireflies In The Garden with Julia Roberts, Ryan Reynolds, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson, Carrie-Anne Moss and Hayden Panettiere. All Senator US productions and were produced by Senator CEO Marco Weber.

The slate includes the acquisitions Splice, a sci-fi horror that is currently in post-production and stars Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, the French gangster hit Public Enemy No 1 starring Vincent Cassel, Gerard Depardieu and Mathieu Amalric and the slasher film All The Boys Love Mandy Lane starring Amber Heard.

All of the abovementioned films will be distributed in the US by Senator's newly formed theatrical arm headed by Mark Urman. The first film to be released will be The Informers in the first quarter of 2009.

The distribution agreement encompasses all ancillary windows. SPWAG's vice president of acquisitions and production Scott Shooman brought the deal to Sony and senior vice president of business affairs Michael Helfand negotiated the terms with ICM on behalf of Senator.

October 29 2008
Variety

Essential Pictures has launched development of "Outlander" as a potential franchise based on the Diana Gabaldon series of fantasy novels.

The newly minted shingle's out to directors with an adaptation from Randall Wallace ("Braveheart"); the goal is to start production next spring. Gabaldon's series of six novels center on an 18th century Scottish Highlander and his time-traveling wife.

Essential made the announcement in conjunction with disclosing that it's expanding operations from financing-sales shingle Essential Entertainment. The production arm's headed by equity firm maven Jim Kohlberg and former Trilogy Entertainment president Neil Kaplan.

Essential Pictures aims to develop, finance and produce two to three films a year in the $10 million-$40 million budget range, with some financing coming from foreign sales and domestic partners.

Move comes nearly two years after Kohlberg joined with veteran sales-acquisitions exec Jere Hausfater to launch Essential Entertainment (Daily Variety, Jan. 23, 2007). Essential has since been involved in financing "Defiance," "Point Break: Indo" and "My One and Only."More than one option (Co) Daily Variety Filmography, Year, Role (Co) Daily Variety

Essential's also developing romantic comedy "Bronwyn and Clyde," with Barry Sonnenfeld in negotiations to direct from a script by Tom Vaughan and Kristy Dobkin. Kohlberg and Kaplan are producing along with Chris Uettwiller and Dolly Hall.

More than one option (Person) Neil Kaplan Actor, Voice (Person) Neil Kaplan Producer More than one option (Film) Defiance 1980 - Jan-Michael Vincent, John Flynn (Film) Defiance Jean Jennings, Armand Weston (Film) Defiance Brent Huff, Terence M O\'Keefe More than one option

October 28 2008
The Hollywood Reporter

NEW YORK -- Intrepid Pictures is on board to produce Scott Wiper's Hitchcockian thriller "The Cold Light of Day."

Wiper and John Petro's screenplay follows Will Shaw, a young Wall Street trader whose family is kidnapped on a vacation to Spain. He's left with only hours to find them, uncover a government conspiracy and the connection between their disappearance and his father's secrets.

Intrepid Pictures principals Trevor Macy and Marc D. Evans will finance and produce the film, which Essential Entertainment is repping at next week's American Film Market. Intrepid produced one of this year's biggest hits, Rogue Pictures' "The Strangers." "Day" will be made outside of Universal and Rogue, which have a first-look pact with Intrepid. Uni is currently negotiating a sale of Rogue to Relativity.

Wiper co-wrote and directed the 2007 Lionsgate actioner "The Condemned." Intrepid sees 'Cold Light of Day' Thriller is from Scott Wiper and John Petro

October 28 2008
Screen Daily

Essential Entertainment co-founder Jim Kohlberg and producer Neil Kaplan have launched sister company Essential Pictures to develop, package, finance and produce films and have unveiled a maiden slate of seven titles.

Essential Pictures plans to make two to three films a year in the $10m-40m budget range and is seeking product from scripts to books and pre-production galleys.

Jere Hausfater will sell worldwide rights to all Essential Pictures product through Essential Entertainment, which will head into AFM with a bumper slate on the back of recent acquisitions Love And Other Impossible Pursuits starring Natalie Portman and the Intrepid Pictures thriller Cold Light Of Day.

Portman also stars in one of the first Essential Pictures films, the thriller Isabella V that Dan Gordon will direct. Essential is producing with Brightlight Pictures and Portman's Handsome Charlie Films.

The roster includes Todd Robinson's political thriller The Last Full Measure starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne and Andy Garcia in association with Trilogy Entertainment Group; Randall Wallace's adaptation of Diana Gabaldon's time traveling novel Outlander; and Barry Sonnenfeld's romantic comedy Bronwyn And Clyde written by Tom Vaughan and Kristy Dobkin that Kohlberg and Kaplan will produce with Chris Uettiwiller and Dolly Hall.

Rounding out the initial line-up are AM Homes' adaptation of her satirical novel This Book Will Save Your Life in association with Stone Village Pictures; a remake with Gianni Nunnari and Hollywood Gang of Leonardo Pieraccioni's 1996 Italian comedy Il Ciclone based on a screenplay by Darin Mark; and Ali Calamari's celebrity tabloid romantic comedy A Match Made In Magazines.

"At the heart of Essential Pictures is our desire and our capability to produce creative and commercial projects which take advantage of the fact that we have the necessary distribution in having Essential Entertainment as a partner to handle each film," Kohlberg, who becomes chair, said.

Kaplan, who previously served as partner and president of Trilogy Entertainment Group and is named President and COO, added: "With this smart economic model and the collective experience of the team, we can provide a producer and filmmaker friendly environment that's material driven in which projects have a built-in distribution system."

October 28 2008
Natalie Portman falls in "Love"

Variety

Natalie Portman is set to star with Scott Cohen and Charlie Tahan in "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits," a Don Roos-directed adaptation of an Ayelet Waldman novel.

Produced by Marc Platt, the film will begin shooting in Manhattan on Nov. 10. Roos wrote the script.

Story revolves around a young woman who finds the key to recovering her marriage in her relationship with her precocious stepson.

The project becomes the first film funded by Incentive Filmed Entertainment. The financing entity was unveiled by William Morris at the Cannes film fest, with $100 million in production financing and a plan to fund films with budgets under $15 million. Incentive then licenses rights to both foreign and domestic distributors.

Portman will be executive producer under her handsomecharlie films banner. The shingle has a first-look deal with Participant Prods., and Portman recently wrote and directed "Eve," a short film that starred Lauren Bacall, Ben Gazzara and Olivia Thirlby.

David Molner, managing director of Screen Capital Intl. and chairman of Incentive Filmed Entertainment, said Portman’s deal salvages a film that was imperiled when Jennifer Lopez abruptly dropped out.

"We were left in the lurch by one actress and rescued by another," Molner said. "It goes to show that, particularlywith independent features, nothing is more important than the talent. It’s a blessing that Natalie loved the script and now we’ve got a strong film that we can sell at AFM."

Platt, who just produced the Jonathan Demme-directed "Rachel Getting Married," is in production on the Rob Marshall-directed "Nine" for the Weinstein Co. and Relativity. Platt exec produced Roos’ most recent film, "Happy Endings," and as Orion’s production head, supervised Roos’ first film as a writer, the 1992 drama "Love Field." Platt gave the Waldman book to Roos and lobbied him to direct after Roos turned in a strong adaptation.

October 16 2008
Hollywood Reporter

ORLANDO -- Paramount is fiddling with its holiday release plans at the eleventh hour, delaying the wide release of true-life drama "The Soloist," starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx, and the Daniel Craig-toplined Nazi-escape film "Defiance" until the first quarter.

Par is moving "Soloist," the story of Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez's relationship with a homeless musician, to a March 13 wide release date. The film, a DreamWorks/Universal production, had been considered a possible awards-season candidate and -- with its trailer already playing in theaters -- had been set to unspool Nov. 21 over the prime pre-Thanksgiving frame.

It was not clear if "Soloist" might receive an Academy-qualifying run before Dec. 31.

As for "Defiance," a Par Vantage production, Par will postpone its Dec. 12 limited bow to an Oscar-qualifying debut Dec. 31, which will maintain its viability for Academy consideration. It will delay an expansion into wider release until Jan. 16.

October 10 2008
First look: 'Defiance' shows survival side of WWII

USA TODAY

Suddenly, there is a surge in World War II-themed films. Titles on the horizon include Valkryie, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Good.

But filmmaker Ed Zwick isn't jumping on a bandwagon with Defiance. "We optioned the rights 10 years ago," he says. What drew him was a story that shows Jews not just as victims, but fighting back.

The Dec. 12 release is based on the true story of three Jewish brothers, Tuvia, Zus and Asael Bielski, in what is now Belarus. They rose up against the Germans and saved about 1,200 lives. "The survivors were generally reticent about sharing their experiences," says Zwick about why the facts behind the Bielski Brigade haven't been widely known. "They felt the burden of those who did not survive."

If the face on the poster that will be in theaters Friday shakes (but not stirs) you, that's because Daniel Craig, aka James Bond, is holding the submachine gun. "He was a very reluctant hero," Zwick says of Craig's Tuvia. "Uneducated, unsophisticated, by no means a person you would assume to be a leader of any kind. Bond is an unambivalent hero. Tuvia is more realistic."

October 3 2008
Variety

Zwick Receives Kodak Award

Edward Zwick will receive the Kodak Award for Excellence in Filmmaking at the upcoming ShowEast confab in Orlando, Fla. Zwick is next in theaters Dec. 12 with "Defiance," about three brothers who escape Nazi-controlled Poland and join Russian resistance fighters. The Paramount Vantage film stars Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell.

Zwick's directing credits include "Blood Diamond," "The Last Samurai," "The Siege," "Courage Under Fire" and "Legends of the Fall."

His feature film producing credits include "Defiance," "Traffic" and "I Am Sam." ShowEast runs Oct 13-16.

September 30 2008
Singapore Tatler

Most people have seen a Jan de Bont film. His Hollywood credits include director of cinematography of Basic Instinct, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon 3, The Hunt for Red October and director of Speed, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Twister and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. Currently in pre-production of Point Break 2 to be shot in Singapore and Southeast Asia later this year, de Bont doesn’t see it as a sequel. “What attracted me most is that it’s not a remake; it’s a continuation of the story.” The original Point Break starred Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze and has become a cult film and even a live stage show.

De Bont has worked on sequels before, most noticeably Speed 2: Cruise Control. It’s a challenging situation for a director to be in – to make a new film while not disappointing fans of the original. As de Bont explains, “It’s the hardest thing to do and that happened when I did Speed 2. The studio wanted to make it, but to make a sequel you have to use the same actors, otherwise, don’t call it a sequel. Therefore this one is not a sequel – it’s a continuation, the next generation.” Point Break 2 takes place in Singapore and the surrounding islands and waters. De Bont is impressed with the Lion City: “It’s a dynamic city. Visually, it’s a stunning place.” He plans to use local crews and the cast includes actors from this part of the world. So it appears Southeast Asia is on its way to becoming the new Hollywood. That’s the plan. A US$100 million media financing facility was established in Singapore in 2005 and is managed by RGM Holdings, an executive production and international talent management. In conjunction with Essential Entertainment, RGM is the executive producer of Point Break 2.

The action-adventure genre is a demanding one and it’s been said that the director is really the star of these blockbusters. As de Bont explains, “You have to be inventive, because you know that you have a one time shot to make the movie stand out among hundreds of others. In a drama you only have to figure out telling the story; here you have to do everything. And you have to come out with new action, new ideas, and how to get you character involved in that same action, and not only that, how to get your actor to do some of those stunts.” Filmmaking has come a long way since de Bont first picked up a camera in the Netherlands. With computer-generated imager and the ability to create something out of nothing, does it still come down to a good story? As de Bont explains, “All the successful movies have great stories, most of them simple stories that give you a chance to get into the characters.”

De Bont’s films have the “bigger than Ben Hur” stamp on them, so it’s not surprising that the sweeping Lawrence of Arabia is one of his favourites. “You can see it over and over because it’s such an amazing story, such a character study.”

So after all these years photographing, producing and directing films, de Bont still sees the payoff as watching audience reaction. “I only see movies in the theatre with audiences who pay. I never go to pre-screenings. That never gives you a real idea. It’s when people have made a choice to go and see your movie – that’s what it’s about.”

September 17 2008
Edward Zwick's WWII pic, "Defiance," will world preem Nov. 9 at the ArcLight Hollywood's Cinerama Dome Theater as the closing night film at the AFI Fest. Zwick, an AFI alum, previously attended the fest in 2006 where he previewed his pic "Blood Diamond." Set for release in December, Zwick's "Defiance" is based on the true story of three brothers who form a resistance against the Nazis. The gala, hosted by Audi of America, will wind down the fest, which starts Oct. 30.

September 14 2008
Hollywood Reporter

'American Carol' Takes aim at Dems

"An American Carol" is coming to a theater near you, whether you like it or not.

A zany comedy that promises to offend Hollywood's liberal sensibilities -- coming just one month before the presidential election -- there's more riding on "Carol" than one might expect.

For one, it's the first wide release distributed by Vivendi Entertainment, which launched as a theatrical distribution company in March. Vivendi will open "Carol" on 2,000 screens Oct. 3. And "Carol" is the first theatrical production from Mpower Pictures, the studio co-founded by Mel Gibson's longtime producing partner Steve McEveety.

It's loosely based on "A Christmas Carol," only instead of Ebenezer Scrooge learning an appreciation for Christmas, a Michael Moore-type filmmaker who is visited by the ghosts of George Washington, George Patton and President Kennedy must learn to appreciate the USA.

"Carol" isn't the only politically charged film set for wide release before voters head to the polls Nov. 4, but it's the only one making fun of Democrats. "If the grass-root Republicans come out, this movie will be very successful," said actor Robert Davi, who plays an Islamic terrorist in the film.With the Republican base so fired up since candidate John McCain selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, the timing for "Carol" couldn't be better. "This is one of the most unusual elections of our lives, and Palin has injected even more energy into it," said the pic's chief architect David Zucker. "The more people talk about the election, the better our movie will do, and the better Oliver Stone's movie will do."

Zucker -- the writer, producer and director best known for a couple of "Scary Movie" sequels as well as "The Naked Gun" -- is referring to Stone's left-leaning film "W.," a warts-and-all biographical look at President George W. Bush due Oct. 17.

How far left "W." will lean remains to be seen. As for "Carol," it not only leans right, but so do some of its stars, like Kelsey Grammer and Jon Voight. "Carol" is partially backed by nonprofit group the Moving Picture Institute, which gave a grant to one of the film's writers, Myrna Sokoloff, to help the part-time schoolteacher finish her work on the script.

Partisanship, however, is immaterial to the Moving Picture Institute's decision to partially fund its script, founder Thor Halvorssen said. MPI's mission is "to nurture promising filmmakers who are committed to protecting a free society," Halvorssen said.

What that has meant until "Carol" came along was producing, funding or supporting in a variety of ways 10 documentaries, and counting, that have been made by Democrats, Republicans and everything in between. "They didn't care about my politics. They put their money where their mouth is," said Colin Gray, who accepted a grant from MPI to help market "Freedom's Fury."

Gray describes himself as "very left of center." "Freedom's Fury," which he made with his sister, is about "the bloodiest water polo game in Olympic history" and the role that game played in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

What convinced MPI to branch out from strictly documentaries and embrace a Zucker comedy is the film's irreverent approach to political correctness. "Support for freedom sometimes involves disrespect for authority," Halvorssen said.

As for Zucker and Sokoloff, they're both ex-liberals who displayed their transformation into conservatism four years ago when they partnered on a group of humorous TV commercials during the last presidential election cycle. The popularity of those ads encouraged them to make "Carol," with Sokoloff working on the story while Zucker and screenwriter Lewis Friedman focused on the jokes.

"The audience for 'American Carol' is underserved by Hollywood," Zucker said, noting that the $20 million film skewers such liberal sacred cows as the ACLU and the anti-war movement, two popular causes among the entertainment industry elite. "About 150 million people will love it, and 150 million people will hate it."

McEveety said the film will appeal more to "Airplane!" fans than to the "Scary Movie" crowd, and he's not particularly worried about charges of partisanship. "Sure, it takes a position, but it's fun," he said. "Can't we have a little fun during this election?"

The film's strong political opinion has resulted in a lot of free publicity from the likes of CNN and Fox News, which doesn't surprise Vivendi Entertainment president Tom O'Malley.

"This is the first film I can think of from Hollywood that pokes fun at the left. That makes it fresh," O'Malley said.

September 6 2008
Screen Daily

Jere Hausfater's Essential Entertainment has picked up international rights to David Zucker's political satire Big Fat Important Movie, known as An American Carol in North America.

Essential will introduce the film to buyers here and screens the film on September 6 and 7 at Deluxe Postproduction. Vivendi Entertainment holds domestic rights to the project starring Kevin Farley as a notorious documentary film-maker renowned for his attacks on America who launches a crusade to abolish the Fourth Of July holiday weekend.

The film was screened by Zucker to 1,000 attendees at the Republican National Convention last week in Minneapolis St Paul.

Kelsey Grammer, Leslie Neilsen, country music star Trace Adkins, Dennis Hopper, James Woods, Robert Davi, Geoffrey Arend, Serdar Kalsin and Jon Voight round out the key cast.

Zucker co-wrote the screenplay with Myrna Sokoloff and Lewis Friedman and Mpower Pictures' Stephen McEveety and John Shepherd produced and Sokoloff served as executive producer.

"Toronto is the perfect international setting to introduce buyers to Big Fat Important Movie," Essential's president of international John Fremes said. "With the current international political climate, showcasing the international title during the Toronto Film Festival will give the audience a taste of Zucker's continued comic genius with this project."

Zucker previously directed Airplane!, Scary Movie 3 and 4 and the first two Naked Gun films.

Essential's sales slate includes Ed Zwick's second world war Resistance thriller Defiance starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber, which Paramount Vantage will release in North America, Richard Loncraine's 1950s-set comedy My One And Only with Renee Zellweger, which CAA represents in North America and will tempt buyers with footage here, and Gregor Jordan's adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel The Informers that Senator holds in North America.

August 11 2008
Scott Steindorff's Stone Village has acquired "Lobo," a spec script for an action thriller by Dikran Ornekian and Ryan Colluci about a colony of werewolves in Brazil. Ezna Sands has been set to direct. The film has been fast-tracked for an Oct. 15 production start and will shoot outside Rio de Janeiro. Pic's under-$15 million budget will be financed independently. Essential Entertainment has been retained to sell international territories. In the film, a man receives a photo and letters from his mother's will, then heads to an isolated town in the Amazon to discover his roots. There, he discovers a near-extinct species of werewolves and his true identity, and he helps the werewolves wage a battle for survival. "The stylized nature of the film is what drew me, because it's far less a monster movie than a Western in the mold of Sergio Leone's 'Once Upon a Time in America,' " Sands said. "I have the opportunity to bring back to audience the kind of hero they had in the '70s, someone as dark and conflicted as the new James Bond or the Dark Knight. Our intention is to tell a single story over three films, and this first chapter is a guy who makes a massive revelation." Steindorff will produce and Dylan Russell and Scott LaStaiti are executive producers. The film has begun casting, and IPG is packaging a companion graphic novel that will be written by the scribes. Sands just completed his feature directing debut, an untitled thriller that mixes elements of fiction and reality. Stone Village is shooting "Stan Helsing" and recently produced and financed "Love in the Time of Cholera."

June 19 2008
Kevin Bacon has signed on to star in "My One and Only," joining Renee Zellweger, Chris Noth, Nick Stahl and Logan Lerman in the film, which director Richard Loncraine has begun shooting in Baltimore. Charlie Peters wrote the script. Pic is inspired by George Hamilton's childhood adventures as he and his brother were taken on a road trip by their eccentric and glamorous mom, who drove along the East Coast looking for a rich man to take care of the family. Bacon will play the philandering band leader she tries to leave behind. The film is being financed by Herrick Entertainment, whose Norton Herrick is producing with Aaron Ryder of Raygun Prods. CAA and Essential Entertainment are handling worldwide sales. "My One and Only" is the first film Herrick has financed. He made his money in construction projects and also co-owns a stable of racehorses. He decided to try film after acquiring Las Vegas rights to "Hairspray" and setting the musical for a short run at the Luxor. Bacon next stars in the Ron Howard-directed "Frost/Nixon," opening Dec. 5, and HBO's "Taking Chance."

May 27 2008
Chris Noth will star with Renee Zellweger in "My One and Only," the Richard Loncraine-directed comedy based on a childhood adventure of actor George Hamilton. Shooting begins next month. Zellweger plays Anne Deveraux, a glamorous dreamer who travels from city to city looking for a wealthy man to fund a new life for her and her sons. Noth plays a retired military doctor who might just fit the bill. Scripted by Charlie Peters, the film is based on a true story that Hamilton shared with Merv Griffin about his early life on the road with his mother and brother. "My One and Only" is a co-production of Raygun Prods., Artfire Films and Merv Griffin Entertainment. Artfire is financing, and Aaron Ryder, Ara Katz and Art Spigel will produce. Hamilton will be exec producer along with Ron Ward, Rob Pritchard, Dan Fireman and Robert Kosberg. Noth reprises his role as Carrie Bradshaw's love interest Mr. Big in the "Sex and the City" feature, which New Line opens Friday.

May 16 2008
Jere Hausfater launched his Los Angeles-based development, production, worldwide sales and distribution company less than 18 months ago with the backing of chairman and sole investor Jim Kohlberg, the Palo Alto businessman, and the hiring of president John Fremes.

Hausfater, a veteran if ever there was one, who was former executive vice-president of Miramax International, head of worldwide sales and acquisitions at Intermedia and longtime senior officer at Buena Vista International, immediately built a slate of films to sell from producers such as Senator Entertainment (Fireflies In The Garden) and Samuel Hadida (Killing Suki Flood, Solomon Kane).

But Essential has moved swiftly since then. At the company's second Cannes, Hausfater will introduce the true-life saga Queen Of The South starring Eva Mendes as a drug baroness, and an Indonesia-set sequel to the heist thriller Point Break called Point Break Indo that Jan de Bont is lining up to direct.

The Essential CEO is expecting good things from a buyers' screening of Defiance, Ed Zwick's wartime saga starring Daniel Craig, while Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Informers and Solomon Kane are in post. Shooting is scheduled to begin in Baltimore on May 23 on Richard Loncraine's 1950s comedy My One And Only, starring Renee Zellweger, and Hausfater expects to conclude further sales on the horror comedy Stan Helsing and show footage from Clive Barker's Book Of Blood.

How has the company grown so fast? "A lot of it is timing," Hausfater says. "Summit has been taking a different direction and with the Lionsgate-Mandate merger we saw a hole open up in the triple-A sales and distribution sector. Having John as president of international is a great thing and we have fantastic executives like Randy Hermann, our CFO and COO, and our head of business development Neil Caplan, who's very involved in business affairs, producer relationships and active in development."

Essential has typically acted as a pure sales agent, taking an executive producer role on certain projects. Lately Hausfater has been building the company's participation in script development. "Development is historically an area where it's hard to get money, but in order to be involved with pictures you believe in, there's no choice but to get on board as developers."

The recently announced Tom Wolfe adaptation I Am Charlotte Simmons is the first example of this.

"The main thing is about taking control of our own destiny and that's the natural next step for a company of our size," adds Fremes. "Buyers are very comfortable coming into our office knowing the product is of a high standard."

But Hausfater sounds a note of caution on buyers. "It's as if they're looking for reasons not to buy these days. They're not being profligate. We have to be adaptable and while we tend to focus on an upper level space, we're also looking for niche movies. We can go shopping at Neiman Marcus but we're not above browsing the shelves at Wal-Mart."

May 13 2008
CANNES -- Seventeen years after "Point Break" washed up in movie theaters, surf's up for the sequel, "Point Break: Indo," with Jan de Bont aboard to direct. RGM Entertainment and Essential Entertainment will exec produce this Asia-based follow-up to director Kathryn Bigelow's original, which starred de Bont's "Speed" lead Keanu Reeves as an FBI agent casing a gang of surfer bank robbers. The new film will take place 20 years after the disappearance of one of the criminal surfers (Patrick Swayze). Both the original and sequel are written by W. Peter Iliff. Plot details and possible character reprises have not been disclosed, but the film will shoot in Singapore and Southeast Asia. Taylor Morgan Pictures' Chris Taylor and John Morgan will produce. RGM's Devesh Chetty, Essential's Jere Hausfater and Neil Kaplan, and the Paradigm-repped de Bont will executive produce.

May 13 2008
CANNES "Speed" helmer Jan de Bont is to reprise Kathryn Bigelow's iconic surfer movie "Point Break." Pic is being financed and exec produced by Singapore's RGM Entertainment and launched into international markets this week by L.A.-based sales company Essential Entertainment. Singapor's Media Development Authority is also financing. Original scripter W. Peter Iliff has penned the screenplay for the new movie, which takes place in Singapore and Indonesia 20 years after the disappearance of Patrick Swayze character Bodhi. Story and casting details remain under wraps though RGM said several major stars have been approached. Production is skedded to take place in Southeast Asia beginning in the fall, with Chris Taylor and John Morgan producing. Devesh Chetty of RGM Entertainment, Jere Hausfater and Neil Kaplan of Essential Entertainment, and de Bont take exec production credits. "This is exactly the kind of movie RGM was set up to produce: Asian-themed stories for a global market that will get a North American theatrical release," Chetty said. "The global interest in Asia and the taste for extreme sports are both growing, and Jan de Bont is going to deliver some action that will be very different to what has been seen before." Essential, headed by Hausfater and equity firm veteran Jim Kohlberg, is also repping Dennis Lee's family drama "Fireflies in the Garden," Ed Zwick's war drama "Defiance" and Richard Loncraine-directed "My One and Only."

May 6 2008
Eva Mendes, Josh Hartnett and Ben Kingsley will star in Jonathan Jakubowicz's drug-trafficking drama "Queen of the South." Elizabeth Avellan and Sandra Condito will produce the adaptation of Spanish writer Arturo Perez-Reverte's novel about a Mexican woman turned Spanish drug lord (Mendes) out to avenge her boyfriend's murder. Hartnett plays a Marine who gets involved in her business, and Kingsley plays a Russian businessman. The project, once set up at Warner Independent, is now being independently financed by Winchester Capital in conjunction with Origen PC and Plural Entertainment. Essential Entertainment is handling international sales. The leads are repped by CAA; Mendez is additionally repped by Management 360.

May 6 2008
Eva Mendes, Josh Hartnett and Ben Kingsley will topline helmer Jonathan Jakubowicz's "Queen of the South" (La reina del sur), an adaptation of the bestseller by Spanish author-journo Arturo Perez Reverte. Elizabeth Avellan and Sandra Condito will produce pic while Winchester Capital, Spain's Origen and Plural Entertainment will serve as executive producers. Avellan, Condito and Jakubowicz are working under their new banner, Tres Malandros. Jakubowicz, an L.A.-based Venezuelan filmmaker penned the screenplay with Albert Torres. Story tracks a Mexican woman who escapes to Spain after her drug-runner boyfriend is murdered. Teresa becomes the reigning drug smuggler in Spain, bent on avenging her lover. The female-driven actioner is set to shoot in Mexico and Spain starting September, according to Condito. Jean-Luc De Fanti will exec produce with Plural's Daniel Cebrian, Origen's Antonio Cardenal and L.A.-based producer Sergio Aguero. Jere Hausfater's Essential Entertainment is handling international sales and will take the pic to the Cannes market this month. Pic was originally set at Warner Independent where it went into turnaround.

April 30 2008
As the international film community gets ready to head to the south of France next week, a seismic shift and a few other movements are realigning the balance of power among the major film sales companies.

New Line International is moving out of the business in the wake of the company's absorption into Warner Bros., while its titles will start to go out overseas via the Warner studio pipelines. That leaves the various territorial distributors with which the mini-major had output deals scrambling for a certain level of product.

The company had indie distribution arrangements in the U.K., France, Scandinavia, Spain, South Africa, Greece, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. More or less, most of these will have New Line titles through 2009.

But as the current deal cycle is already looking to 2009 and beyond, ex-New Line clients will be seeking to replace that studio-level product as soon as this coming Cannes market.

That's good news for suppliers ready to fill the void. Several companies are ramping up or are already delivering similar levels of product.

"It's a good time for us, as we're looking at bigger product," says QED's head of sales, Kim Fox. "Buyers that have seen a steady stream of product for years (from New Line) are looking for new partners, but those new partners will have to have bigger product." Among QED's upcoming titles are Oliver Stone's George Bush biopic "W.," Peter Jackson-produced sci-fi pic "District 9" and Milla Jovovich thriller "A Perfect Getaway." There's the added hope that New Line's exit could revive sales to territories such as Spain and France, which have recently been in the doldrums when it comes to indie pic imports.

"There is an unmistakable opportunity," says Essential Entertainment topper Jere Hausfater, who will be repping titles such as Richard Loncraine's "My One and Only," starring Renee Zellweger. Meanwhile, sales behemoths such as Summit Entertainment and Mandate Pictures have morphed into slightly different entities. Summit has sprouted a domestic distribution operation and is chasing studio ambitions, which seems to have taken the main emphasis off of foreign sales. And Mandate has merged with Lionsgate, keeping the Mandate brand intact but now also repping lots more titles, encompassing the various product streams of the two companies as well as third-party product.

While Mandate Intl. prexy Helen Lee Kim says she's much busier, Summit co-CEO Patrick Wachsberger says he has "less to do." He explains that when the new Summit was created, the company set up a substantial number of output deals for Summit-produced films. The shingle has pacts with Telemunchen in Germany, SND/M6 in France, Nordisk in Scandinavia, Contender in the U.K. and Entertainment One in Canada, and could be looking to ink two or three more. But Summit continues to handle third-party pics as well, including Terrence Malick's "Tree of Life," starring Sean Penn and Brad Pitt, and Roman Polanski's adaptation of Robert Harris' novel "The Ghost." And these wouldn't necessarily be going to output partners overseas. As these movements among the larger sales companies continue to unfold, several new contenders are stepping into the international sales fray. Among them are producers Bold Films, the Film Department and Unified Pictures.

Gary Michael Walters, co-prexy of Bold Films, explains that it is an opportune time to get into the sector. "As we've accelerated our production pace, it makes more sense to handle our own sales," he says. "We're integrating our sales and creative to be sensitive to the needs of the global marketplace as we put our films together. And we see an opportunity with New Line's output now going through Warner Bros., Mandate folded into Lionsgate and Summit becoming more domestic-oriented. We see a sweet spot in that niche of $10 million-$30 million smart but commercial pictures."

On Bold's slate, being repped by former Lionsgate Intl. prexy Stephanie Denton in Cannes, is thriller "Jack," helmed by Joseph Ruben, about a killer suffering from traumatic memory loss. Bold hopes to have casting ready to announce by Cannes. "The timing couldn't be any better," adds the Film Department's international prexy Steve Bickel, who has Gerard Butler thriller "Law Abiding Citizen" and Catherine Zeta-Jones starrer "The Rebound" in production. "Buyers are always looking for studio-competitive movies and star-driven product. That's where we are headed as well. We're putting together a slate that crosses over genres -- action-thrillers, sexy rom-coms -- all well-written material that has its own unique voice but at the same time wide appeal."

But Unified's new head of international sales, Ann Dubinet, says buyers need to relax a bit when it comes to demanding marquee names. "Not every movie can star Brad Pitt," she sighs. "International buyers are so cast-dependent in their buying."

Dubinet notes that the goal for Unified, which brings equity to the table on all projects, is "to step into the place that Focus gave up -- and not that we just do arthouse films." The company is taking risks on new filmmakers and somewhat smaller-budgeted pics. Among three finished films Unified will screen in Cannes is comedy "Bob Funk," from a first-time helmer and starring Rachael Leigh Cook.

As new sellers join the Cannes party, New Line Intl. topper Camela Galano says she'll be heading to the Croisette with just two other execs and one film to screen ("Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D"). Noting the obvious, she says, "We just won't be selling movies," adding, "but we'll be doing what we normally do with our outputs, which is go through the lineup, releases and materials."

April 28 2008
Essential Entertainment is financing a bigscreen version of Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons," with Liz Friedlander ("Take the Lead") attached to direct from John Watson's script. It's the first time Wolfe has allowed one of his novels to be optioned for a feature since "The Bonfire of the Vanities" in 1987. The author also optioned "A Man in Full" to NBC. Trilogy Entertainment Group will produce in association with Syntax; Essential exec produces. Watson, Pen Densham and Neil Kaplan will produce, with Chris Law and Essential's Jere Hausfater exec producing. "I Am Charlotte Simmons" centers on an Ivy League student who must undergo her first substantial disillusionment and betrayal after she lands in an unforgiving world. Watson and Densham's producing credits include "Backdraft," "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys," "Larger Than Life" and the upcoming comedy "Just Buried," which premiered at last year's Toronto Film Festival. Watson's screenplay credits include "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," which he co-wrote and produced with Densham; he recently adapted Richard Condon's "An Infinity of Mirrors." Friedlander's a veteran musicvideo director for bands including U2, R.E.M. and Celine Dion. She's repped by Gersh; CAA repped the book rights. Essential Entertainment began operations last year as a specialist in talent packaging and late-stage development, production financing and sales, distribution and marketing for third-party and inhouse productions. Its Berlin 2008 lineup included Matador Pictures' "Clive Barker's Book of Blood," now in production with John Harrison directing; spoof comedy "Stan Helsing," to be produced by Scott Steindorff and Stone Village; and "My One and Only," to be produced by Aaron Ryder. Read the full article at: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117984770.html

February 11 2008
Renee Zellweger is near a deal to star in "My One and Only," a comedy based on a childhood adventure of actor George Hamilton. Charlie Peters wrote the script, and Richard Loncraine will direct the pic, which begins shooting in April on the East Coast. Pic is a co-production of Raygun Prods., Artfire Films and Merv Griffin Entertainment. Set in the 1950s, the comedy focuses on the glamorous Anne Deveraux (Zellweger) as she drives down the Eastern seaboard from city to city in a quixotic search for a wealthy man to fund a new life for her and her sons. The film is based on a true story that Hamilton told Merv Griffin about his early life on the road with his mom and brother.Aaron Ryder, Ara Katz and Art Spigel will produce. Artfire is financing, and worldwide sales will be handled by Essential Entertainment, which will shop the film in Berlin this week. Hamilton will be exec producer along with Ron Ward, Rob Pritchard, Dan Fireman and Robert Kosberg. Zellweger will next be seen alongside George Clooney in the comedy "Leatherheads," which Universal releases April 4. Read the full article at: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117980724.html

February 10 2008
BERLIN -- Bo Zenga is making his directorial debut on the horror spoof "Stan Helsing" for Scott Steindorff's Stone Village Pictures. Jere Hausfater's Essential Entertainment has signed on to handle worldwide sales on the new film. Written by Zenga, the film takes place on Halloween night where the reluctant hero and video-store clark, Stan Helsing, has to save a town from the six biggest monsters in cinema history. Principal photography starts in April. Zenga has a strong track record in the spoof genre. His credits include serving as a producer on "Scary Movie," which grossed more than $300 million. The "Scary Movie" franchise went on to gross more than $800 million. Steindorff and Zenga previously collaborated together on "Turistas." Essential is also selling the Julia Roberts starrer, "Fireflies in the Garden"; "Clive Barker's "Book of Blood"; "The Informers," starring Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Bassinger and Winona Ryder; "Solomon Kane" from writer-director Michael J. Bassett; and the action-drama "Defiance" from Edward Zwick.

February 7 2008
BERLIN -- Fluctuating currencies, more conservative investment behavior and the ever-present threat of a global economic downturn are all grabbing headlines ahead of the year's first major European-set buying and selling shindig.

But despite the backdrop of hard times, this year's European Film Market, which runs during the Berlin International Film Festival, is primed to be busy.

Unified Pictures CEO Keith Kjarval, whose U.S. sales and financier banner is bringing Jeremy Alter's film noir "The Perfect Sleep" to the market, says it's all been seen before.

"The truth of the matter is the weak dollar doesn't affect our business too much," he said. "People are upping the ante because it has made some domestic executives flinch a little bit. The global economy has seen its fluctuations throughout the years, but it is no secret the film industry flourishes during war, conflict and turmoil. I am very excited about the times we live now and am looking forward to Berlin."

Added Irina Ignatiew, executive vp in charge of international distribution at German sales group Telepool: "If I said the weak dollar wasn't effecting us, I'd be lying. It isn't just the U.S.; a lot of countries have their currencies still tied to the dollar, so we are trying to compensate possible losses by moving higher volumes without underselling the films.

"However, sometimes it just makes sense to wait it out. Generally, we have no reason to complain. We don't feel the problem in the European territories, and we do a lot of our business in Europe."

Buyers jetting into the German capital are quietly confident that this year's EFM, which runs through Feb. 15, will provide steady business and healthy deal levels.

One European-based U.S. acquisitions executive said that there are a handful of projects unspooling during the EFM and a few due for a glitzy rollout on the big screens of the Berlinale that already have whetted buyers' appetites.

"Release slates need to be filled out, and there are a few projects (at Berlin) that look interesting," one buyer said. "The (writers) strike means specialty arms are looking to pick up material to build slates from 2009 on."

Among the market titles expected to attract buzz are "The Damned United," directed by Tom Hooper; Italian director Antonio Luigi Grimaldi's "Caos calmo"; "Solomon Kane," directed by Michael J. Bassett; and Erick Zonca's "Julia," which will have its premiere in Berlin's competition lineup.

The ongoing writers strike in the U.S. and pending SAG industrial action during the summer also could spell opportunity for sellers here with bankrolled projects and firm commitment from quality talent.

Essential Entertainment CEO Jere Hausfater, one of the most recognizable faces in the global market business, said he thought buyers didn't have time to sit down and digest just what impact a strike would have when it started during the opening first few days of the American Film Market in the fall last year.

"With the European Film Market the first big-scale market of the year, the impact has had time to settle in," he said. His company is bringing in a slew of well-heeled titles, including "Kane" and "Fireflies in the Garden."

But the boom times of massive presales paying for production on the back of a director and a sprinkling of tentative talent agreements are long gone.

"At AFM this year, we were very hesitant to prebuy anything since we don't know what will happen, if projects will go ahead or not," said Yoko Higuchi-Zitzmann, head of acquisitions at Germany's Constantin Film. "We may have to look more to European films if some of the U.S. stuff doesn't pan out."

Said Ealing Studios International head of sales Natalie Brenner: "We are only cautiously optimistic because the days of cleaning up on international sales are long over. For independent film, unless you have a big-budget thriller or action film with big names, you really are up against it (in the marketplace). The bigger buyers are just looking for those headline films to fill slates right now."

Brenner and her team are repping the much anticipated "Damned United" at the market. The mantra that quality titles will always sell is set to be bourne out by the market experience over the coming days.

Said Hausfater: "Berlin could be a very, very good market for sellers with quality product on slates. Luckily, we (at Essential) are very fortunate to have movies in post, shooting and a couple with definitive start dates, so we're doing all right." But don't expect dealmaking to be speedy.

"International distributors are very cautious, although optimistically cautious," Hausfater said. "(Buyers') decision-making process is very calculated and cumbersome right now." Said Kjarval: "Buyers in general have experienced this before. I understand that other markets have seen tentative buyers, but if you have quality material and have been paying attention to what audiences are going to see, you will have a good market."

February 1 2008
British horror master Clive Barker is taking his tales of terror to the big screen again. Matador Pictures and Barker's Midnight Picture Show shingle are teaming to adapt what is planned to be the first in a series of films based on the horror author/filmmaker's fiction collection "Books of Blood." John Harrison ("Tales From the Darkside: The Movie") will direct from a script written by Harrison and Darin Silverman. Sophie Ward ("Young Sherlock Holmes") and Jonas Armstrong (the U.K.'s TV series "Robin Hood") are set to star. The "Blood" series consisted of six collections of horror stories published from 1984-85. The books made Barker an overnight literary sensation. "Blood" will adapt the first story from Book 1, which centers on a paranormal expert who, while investigating a gruesome slaying, finds a house that is at the intersection of "highways" transporting the souls in the afterlife. Barker, whose written works have inspired such film franchises as "Hellraiser" and "Candyman," will produce with Midnight Picture Show's Jorge Saralegui and Joe Daley. Matador Pictures' Nigel Thomas and Lauri Apelian and Micky Macpherson of Edinburgh-based Plum Films also are producing. Los Angeles-based Essential Entertainment is handling worldwide sales and will debut the project next week's European Film Market in Berlin. Newbridge Entertainment Capital, Scottish Screen and Entertainment Motion Pictures are financing the film. Barker is in development on a new "Hellraiser" movie, while "Midnight Meat Train," which is based on his short story, is due in the spring from Lionsgate. Barker is repped by ICM.

January 31 2008
Matador Pictures and Midnight Picture Show are teaming to bring "Clive Barker's Book of Blood" to the bigscreen. The project represents the first in a series of "Book of Blood" stories that the two companies plan to make into a film franchise. Sophie Ward and Jonas Armstrong will topline the pic, which is being helmed by John Harrison ("Tales From the Darkside: The Movie" ). Harrison wrote the screenplay with Darin Silverman. Story centers on a paranormal expert who, while investigating a gruesome slaying, finds a house that is at the intersection of "highways" transporting souls to the afterlife. L.A.-based Essential Entertainment is handling worldwide sales for "Book of Blood" and will debut the project at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin. Barker is producing alongside Jorge Saralegui, Joe Daley, Nigel Thomas, Lauri Apelian and Micky Macpherson. "Book of Blood" is produced with Cinema One, the U.K.-based production and financing outfit set up by Matador and Regent Capital, with funding from Newbridge Entertainment Capital, Scottish Screen and Entertainment Motion Pictures. Read the full article at: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117979968.html

January 8 2008
PARIS -- Max Von Sydow and Pete Postlethwaite are joining star James Purefoy in the cast of "Solomon Kane." Relative neophytes Rachel Hurd-Wood ("Perfume: the Story of a Murderer"), Alice Krige ("Silent Hill") and Mackenzie Crook (the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films) have also been cast, according to Paris-based producer-distributor Samuel Hadida, head of Davis Films. Planned as the first in a trilogy, "Solomon Kane" is an epic tale of a 16th century soldier tormented by his past evil deeds, seeking redemption by battling a sinister power threatening the kingdom. Pic is adapted from the pulp novels of Robert E. Howard, author of "Conan the Barbarian," first serialized in the 1920s and '30s. Helmer Michael J. Bassett ("Deathwatch") will direct from his own script for co-producers Hadida ("Domino") and Paul Berrow, head of Epic Tales. Shooting is due to begin in Prague this month. International sales will be handled by Los Angeles-based Essential Entertainment and by Metropolitan Filmexport in France.

October 2 2007
LONDON -- James Purefoy has been cast as puritan swordsman Solomon Kane in a movie of the same name to be made from the stories of Robert E. Howard, the filmmakers said Monday. Purefoy, who recently headlined HBO's "Rome" as Emperor Mark Antony, has been cast in the Davis Films production, which is due to start shooting this year. Paris-based producer and distributor Samuel Hadida said signing Purefoy came after an "exhaustive search" for the iconic hero of Howard's classic comic book character. Howard also created Conan the Barbarian. Kane is a 16th century soldier who learns that his brutal and cruel actions have damned him but is determined to redeem himself by living peaceably. But he finds himself dragged out of retirement for a fight against evil. The first in a planned series of three movies, Michael J. Bassett ("Deathwatch") will direct from his own script, with Hadida and Wandering Star principal Paul Berrow in Prague producing. "(James) Purefoy's ability to embody Kane's complex heroism, struggles and failings as he wages a mortal battle made him the perfect modern hero in this epic fantasy," Hadida said. Purefoy is repped by CAA, Independent Talent Group and Brillstein Entertainment Partners. Davis Films also is working on "Onimusha" with director Christophe Gans and "Killing Suki Flood," to be directed by Louis Couvelaire. Davis is in development on a "Silent Hill" sequel and an English-language remake of Media Asia's "Exiled." Run by French siblings Samuel and Victor Hadida, Davis Films is one of France's leading production and distribution labels. International sales for "Kane" are being handled by Los Angeles-based Essential Entertainment.

October 1 2007
James Purefoy has been cast in the lead on Samuel Hadida's upcoming comic book adaptation Solomon Kane. Following what the producers called "an exhaustive search", they have finally found the man to play the eponymous 16th century soldier and Puritan. Kane is a damned soul following a life of cruelty and brutality, and must redeem himself by battling the forces of darkness. Paris-based Davis Films is planning three episodes based on the comic books by Conan The Barbarian creator Robert E Howard. Los Angeles-based Essential Entertainment is handling international sales. Michael J Bassett will direct from his own screenplay, and principal photography is set to begin in Prague. Hadida called Purefoy "a powerful and commanding screen presence", adding: "Purefoy's ability to embody Kane's complex heroism, struggles and failings as he wages a mortal battle, made him the perfect modern hero in this epic fantasy." Purefoy recently starred as Mark Anthony in BBC/HBO series Rome. He is represented by CAA, Independent Talent Group, and Brillstein Entertainment Partners. Davis Films' slate includes the video game adaptation Onimusha with director Christophe Gans, and Killing Suki Flood, to be directed by Louis Couvelaire. The company is developing a sequel to the horror film Silent Hill and an English-language remake of Media Asia's Exiled.

August 29 2007
Variety

Senator Entertainment has set Billy Bob Thornton and Kim Basinger for "The Informers," an ensemble drama based on short stories by Bret Easton Ellis.

Pic will star Brandon Routh ("Superman Returns"), Austin Nichols ("John From Cincinnati"), Ashley Olsen, Jon Foster and Lou Pucci ("Thumbsucker").

The drama is set over the course of a week in 1983, in the chillingly nihilistic world of Ellis' youth in Los Angeles. Seven storylines intersect, involving movie execs, rock stars, a vampire and other morally challenged characters. Gregor Jordan ("Buffalo Soldiers") is directing.

Production begins in October in L.A., Uruguay and Buenos Aires.

Senator's Marco Weber will produce and Vanessa Coifman is exec producer. Ellis wrote the script with Nicholas Jarecki, who's also exec producing.

While Ellis novels "American Psycho," "Less than Zero" and "The Rules of Attraction" have been turned into films, "The Informers" is the first one he had a hand in adapting. Jarecki just directed "The Outsider," a Showtime docu about indie director James Toback.

More than one option (Film) Buffalo Soldiers 2003 - Joaquin Phoenix, Gregor Jordan (Film) Buffalo Soldiers Glynn Turman, Glynn Turman More than one option

August 9 2007
The Hollywood Reporter, Aug 9, 2007, by Tatiana Siegel and Borys Kit

Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, Alexa Davalos and Tomas Arana are joining the cast of the Daniel Craig starrer "Defiance" for Paramount Vantage. Ed Zwick wrote and is directing the World War II drama, which is based on a true story.

The film revolves around Jewish brothers (Craig, Schreiber and Bell) living in Nazi-occupied Poland who escape into the Belarussian forest where they join Russian resistance fighters in battling the Nazis. Throughout the war, they build a village inside the forest and save the lives of more than 1,200 Jews. Zwick's screenplay is based on Nechama Tec's book "Defiance: The Bielski Partisans."

Davalos will play Lilka, a Polish refugee and the love interest of Craig's character. Arana will play Ben Zion, a skilled leader in the resistance.

Schreiber, whose credits include "The Painted Veil" and "The Manchurian Candidate," next appears in the indie satire "The Ten" and recently finished shooting "Love in the Time of Cholera." He is repped by CAA.

Bell recently wrapped production on sci-fi movie "Jumper" and most recently appeared in Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers." He is repped by Endeavor and Artists Independent Management.

Davalos next appears in Robert Benton's "Feast of Love" opposite Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear. She also appears in Frank Darabont's upcoming collaboration with Stephen King, "The Mist." She is repped by ICM and Anonymous Content.

Arana, whose credits include "The Bourne Supremacy" and "Gladiator," recently wrapped an Italian remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca." He is repped by Kesha Williams at Melanie Greene Management and Diamond Management in the U.K.

June 5 2007
Variety

BERLIN -- The recently wrapped Julia Roberts and Willem Dafoe starrer "Fireflies in the Garden" is selling briskly around the world with a number of deals in Europe, Asia and Africa already in the bag. Pic, produced by Senator Entertainment's Marco Weber and repped by Essential Entertainment, has been picked up by Medusa in Italy, Manga in Spain, RCV in the Benelux and Nordisk for Scandinavia.

Cine Quanon in Japan, Mars Entertainment in South Korea and Nu Metro in South Africa also purchased Dennis Lee's semiautobiographical drama about a family torn apart by an unexpected tragedy.

Berlin-based Senator is releasing the film in Germany in February 2008.

May 24 2007
In Cannes, Momentum Pictures has taken UK and Spanish rights to Defiance, the WWII action drama being planned by Ed Zwick. Bedford Falls and Grosvenor Park are producing and financing. As previously reported, Daniel Craig will star in the film, based on the true story of four brothers who built an armed resistance of Jewish fighters. Richard Napper, Momentum's managing director Europe, said: "With such an epic script and strong talent attached we are very excited to be working with Essential and Grosvenor on this project in both the UK and Spain." The deal was negotiated by Essential Entertainment's CEO Jere Hausfater and Robert Walak, director of acquisitions for Momentum Pictures.

May 21 2007
CANNES -- Just 48 hours after wrapping principal photography, the Julia Roberts' starrer "Fireflies in the Garden" has virtually sold out in Europe. Essential Entertainment signed all rights deals for "Fireflies" in Cannes with Italy's Medusa, Manga in Spain, RCV in Benelux and Nordisk for all of Scandinavia. The Senator International production also locked up several smaller territories, including South Africa for Nu Metro. "I was in Austin (Texas) on Friday for the last day's shoot, flew to Berlin (Senator's headquarters), then came to Cannes on Saturday," "Fireflies" producer and Senator International head Marco Weber said. Directed by Dennis Lee and featuring a cast that includes Ryan Reynolds, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson and Carrie-Anne Moss, "Fireflies" is the first production by Senator International since German parent company Senator Entertainment emerged from insolvency proceedings. "This film really sets our blueprint for the kind of productions we want to do," Weber said. "We want to be about quality, not quantity." Senator International is in preproduction on the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation "The Informers," which Gregor Jordan ("Buffalo Soldier") will direct. English-language productions are the final piece in Senator's rapid post-bankruptcy expansion. Last year, Senator was one of the most active German buyers in Cannes, snatching up such titles as "Son of Rambow," "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Fast Food Nation." The company has also been bolstering its German production slate. On Sunday, Senator announced it had signed a deal with German art house director Andreas Dresen ("Summer in Berlin") for his next two projects. Senator has acquired German theatrical rights to Dresen's "Wolke Neun" (Cloud Nine), which reteams the director with "Summer in Berlin" producer Peter Rommel. The story of a woman who begins an affair after 30 years of marriage is set to begin shooting this summer. After wrapping "Wolke Neun," Dresen will shoot the tragicomedy "Whisky Mit Wodka" (Whiskey With Vodka) as a co-production between Senator Film and Rommel's Peter Rommel productions. "Summer in Berlin" screenwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase will also pen "Whiskey." Senator plans to release both films in Germany next year

May 18 2007
Screen Daily, 18 May 2007, Jeremy Kay in Cannes

Christophe Gans has signed to direct the $70m-plus epic adventure Onimusha for Samuel Hadida's Davis Films.

Gans previously collaborated with Hadida on the worldwide hits Silent Hill and Brotherhood Of The Wolf and will arrive on the Croisette on Sunday to meet buyers.

Several studios are believed to be circling the adaptation of Capcom's global video game smash and Jere Hausfater's Essential Entertainment has reported intense early interest from international buyers.

Leslie Kruger and Master And Commander screenwriter John Collee are adapting the story about a samurai warrior who embarks on a quest to save the woman he loves and the entire world from long prophesied demons.

Production is scheduled to start in February 2008 in China in time for delivery by December 2009.

"I have loved the Onimusha story for years and am overjoyed to have the opportunity now to bring it to life for worldwide film audiences and to access the unparalleled film resources of China to do so on the scale that the story demands," Gans said.

"There is nothing else in the marketplace like Onimusha," Hadida added. "It combines swashbuckling adventure, passion, and heroic destiny on an epic scale.

"I have worked with Christophe on three successful productions and am confident that he brings the ideal vision to realise this incredible story."

"I'm thrilled to continue my relationship with Sammy," Hausfater said. "This film has enough elements to satisfy everybody and will provide unforgettable entertainment of the grandest scale."

Davis Films is currently in pre-production on Michael J Bassett's comic book adaptation Solomon Kane and Louis-Pascal Couvelaire's action title Killing Suki Flood, both of which are being sold here by Essential. Link to story

May 16 2007
Screen Daily, 16 May 2007 by Jeremy Kay in Cannes

Ed Zwick, riding high on the back of his Oscar-nominated global hit Blood Diamond, is preparing the Second World War Polish Resistance epic Defiance and has cast Daniel Craig in the lead.

At time of writing several buyers were circling for domestic rights to the Bedford Falls production, which Zwick will produce and direct from his original screenplay.

Grosvenor Park is financing and will serve as executive producers on the project, which is believed to be in the mid $50m range and is scheduled to begin filming in September. Scouts are eyeing locations in Eastern Europe and Canada.

The true story follows four brothers in Nazi-occupied Poland that flee into the Belarussian Forest with a band of Jews and join up with Russian Resistance fighters.

Jere Hausfater’s Los Angeles-based sales agency Essential Entertainment is handling international sales on the title, which has already sparked intense interest among international buyers here on the Croisette.

The film is being lined up for a fourth quarter 2008 release in time for what parties involved in the project said will be a major Academy Awards push.

Essential is also selling Senator Entertainment’s Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Informers, currently in pre-production, and ensemble drama Fireflies In The Garden, which has wrapped and stars Ryan Reynolds, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson, Carrie-Anne Moss and Julia Roberts.

The slate includes the Sammy Hadida titles Solomon Kane, which Michael J Bassett will direct based on Robert E Howard’s comic book character, and the action thriller Killing Suki Flood, which Louis-Pascal Couvelaire is lining up to direct. Link to Story

March 29 2007
Willem Dafoe, Hayden Panettiere, Shannon Lucio, Ioan Gruffudd and George Newbern are joining the ensemble cast of Senator Entertainment's "Fireflies in the Garden." They join Carrie Anne Moss, Ryan Reynolds, Julia Roberts and Emily Watson, who already have boarded the project. Dennis Lee will make his directorial debut from a screenplay he penned. The story is loosely based on Lee's life and explores the complexities of love and commitment in a family torn apart when faced with an unexpected tragedy. Shooting is scheduled to begin Tuesday in Austin. Senator's Marco Weber and Vanessa Coifman are producing alongside Sukee Chew. The film is the first U.S. production that Senator is financing and producing. "We are quite fortunate to have secured an ensemble with such talent and global boxoffice track record," Weber said. "Their desire to be involved with this film clearly shows the quality of the script." The movie is represented by CAA for North American rights, and Jere Hausfeter's Essential Entertainment is handling foreign territories, excluding Germany, where Senator has an established distribution chain.

February 10 2007
The Hollywood Reporter, Feb. 10, 2007 by Tatiana Siegel

February 9 2007
Variety, Fri., Feb. 9, 2007 by Alison James, Patrick Frater

Essential Entertainment, the new sales outfit fronted by Jere Hausfater and John Fremes, has unveiled its first pics since being formed last month with a large slug of venture capital coin.

Company has boarded two pictures from Samuel Hadida's Davis Films and will handle world rights outside North America. Pics are epic adventure "Solomon Kane" and action-thriller "Killing Suki Flood."

"Solomon" is an adaptation of a Robert E. Howard comic book about a man fighting to retrieve his soul from the devil he sold it to. Pic will be helmed by Michael Bassett ("Deathwatch"), with a Prague shoot skedded to begin in May. Hadida and Wandering Star boss Paul Berrew produce.

"Flood" is to be helmed by former commercials and "Michel Vaillant" director Louis-Pascal Couvelaire from a screenplay by Katherine Tomlinson that is adapted from Robert Leininger's New Mexico-set novel.

Essential, which is chaired by equity finance maven Jim Kohlberg, will arrange production finance, consult with financiers and build a slate of third-party and in-house movies for global sales, distribution and marketing.

Paris-based Davis has recently produced Tony Scott-helmed "Domino" and Christophe Gans' "Silent Hill."

Essential CEO Hausfater has worked at Disney, Intermedia and Miramax. Link to story

February 9 2007
Senator Entertainment will finance and produce its first US production, Fireflies In The Garden, written and to be directed by Dennis Lee. Carrie Anne Moss and Emily Watson star on the project, which is set to begin shooting in March in Austin, Texas. Julia Roberts and Ryan Reynolds in negotiations to come aboard. Lee's semi-autobiographical story explores the complexities of love and commitment in a family torn apart when faced by an unexpected tragedy. Senator's Marco Weber will produce with the company's head of production Vanessa Coifman and Sukee Chew. Jere Hausfater and Milton Liu will serve as executive producers on the project. "Dennis wrote a gripping and entertaining story that encompasses the true meaning of family," Weber said. "This ensemble of actors is a testament to the strength of the material, and we are extremely fortunate to bring all of these people together." CAA is representing North American rights and Hausfater's Essential Entertainment will handle international sales excluding Germany, where Senator will distribute. Senator is currently in pre-production on the Brett Easton Ellis' adaptation The Informers.

February 2 2007
PARIS -- Samuel Hadida's Davis Films has signed French action helmer Louis-Pascal Couvelaire to direct an adaptation of Robert Leininger's cult thriller novel "Killing Suki Flood," Hadida said Thursday. Leininger's novel begins with a chance meeting on a deserted New Mexico highway between Frank, a traveler with a criminal secret, and Suki, a sexy young woman escaping from her sadistic boyfriend. Suki discovers that Frank is carrying a large quantity of stolen cash and he finds that she has taken her boyfriend's stash of diamonds. "It's a very hip, cool road movie, in the style of 'True Romance'," said Hadida, who also produced the Tony Scott-helmed picture. Casting is underway on the English-language movie, which is budgeted in the $30 million range. "I hope we'll shoot this summer in the same Nevada and New Mexico locations which appear in the book," Hadida said. Hadida's distribution company Metropolitan Filmexport will release the film in France in spring 2008. World sales will be launched at next week's European Film Market in Berlin through Essential Entertainment, the new venture launched by sales veteran Jere Hausfater and Jim Kohlberg. An award-winning ad director, Couvelaire's previous credits include Le Mans racing drama "Michel Vaillant" and the desert heist story "Sweat," starring Jean-Hugues Anglade, which also was produced by Hadida. The screenplay for "Killing Suki" is by Katherine Tomlinson, who wrote the TV series "La Femme Nikita." Hadida's recent production credits include video game adaptation "Silent Hill" and Tony Scott's "Domino," which starred Keira Knightley. Davis Film expects to start production in May on the previously announced epic adventure "Solomon Kane" adapted from the Robert E. Howard classic about a 16th century Puritan who wanders the world to vanquish evil. The movie, co-produced with Wandering Star, is directed by Michael Bassett ("Deathwatch"). "Casting is on-going and we're scouting for locations, probably in Prague," Hadida said. The company also is in post-production on the third installment of the "Resident Evil" franchise made with Germany's Constantin Film, which is due for release in the last quarter of this year.

January 22 2007
Variety, Mon., Jan. 22, 2007 by Dave McNary

Veteran sales-acquisitions exec Jere Hausfater and equity firm maven Jim Kohlberg have joined forces as Essential Entertainment, aiming the shingle to serve as a one-stop shop for new investors and producers.

Los Angeles-based Essential will arrange production financing, consult with financiers who want to invest in features and build a slate of third party and inhouse productions for global sales, distribution and marketing. Hausfater, who's worked at Disney, Intermedia and Miramax, will serve as CEO and Kohlberg will be chaiman.

Hausfater said Essential's anchor will be its global sales and distribution capability. He told Daily Variety that Essential's designed to fill a gap for producers by providing more support than a sales agents can provide.

"Essential will serve as a gateway to Hollywood for new investors, monetizing risk for single pictures or a slate of pictures," he added. "We have the ability to use our own funds and other capital to acquire rights, provide pre-production monies, and we also have the expertise to mount financing for pictures outside or in conjunction with studios."

Hausfater said he couldn't disclose the level of capitalization for Essential but added, "It's enough to get into trouble."

Kohlberg's the managing partner in Kohlberg & Co., which he formed in 1987 with his father Jerome Kohlberg Jr., who was the senior founding partner of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Kohlberg & Co. has raised more than $2.2 billion since its founding. He's been involved via the Filbert Steps shingle with producing the 2000 feature "Two Family House" and a documentary on Dalton Trumbo.

"Since last producing and financing films, I have been evaluating various business opportunities for future involvement in the industry," Kohlberg said. "I was impressed not only with the team Jere had assembled, but with our collective vision, which further reinforces the basis of what we're announcing here today."

Essential's also setting up New York-based Essential Prods., with Al Klingenstein as CEO and Kohlberg to develop and produce commercial mainstream pictures. The banner will handle pics of all budget ranges with an emphasis on projects that can perform at the international box office.

Hausfater's also signed Randy Hermann as chief operating officer and chief financial officer and John Fremes as president of international. Hermann, who spent a decade as CFO and exec VP of Mandalay Pictures, will head production financing and advisory functions.

During his Mandalay tenure, Hermann arranged $600 million in production financing. Fremes was most recently president of Element Films Intl. and was the founder and president of Le Monde Entertainment, a division of Alliance Atlantis. Link to story