SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 2011


TODAY Kate Winslet www.ScreenDaily.com


FilmNation’s Flowers blooms for buyers


BY JEREMY KAY Domestic and international acqui- sitions teams crammed into the Varsity cinema 8 yesterday to see 20 minutes of Zhang Yimou’s upcoming Nanking massacre epic. FilmNation’s Glen Basner is sell-


ing international rights outside China and select Asian territories, and introduced footage of the newly titled The Flowers Of War. Christian Bale plays an Ameri-


can who saves a group of children trapped in a church in the days fol- lowing the Japanese invasion of Nanking in 1937. Approximately 40% of the film is in English and 60% in Mandarin. Flowers (which had a working


title Heroes Of Nanking) is tipped to be China’s Oscar submission. Domestic representatives — pro- ducer and New Pictures Film head Zhang Weiping, executive producer David Linde and Stephen Saltzman — are touting it as a late 2011 awards contender. Summit Entertainment head


Patrick Wachsberger, SPC co-heads Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, FilmDistrict’s Peter Schlessel and Adrian Alperovich, Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions head Steve Bersch, Harvey Weinstein and his new VoD colleague Tom Quinn, and Fox head buyer Tony Safford were all in attendance.


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Searchlight buys Shame as Toronto market heats up


BY JEREMY KAY In the first significant domestic acquisition of the festival, Fox Searchlight has earned a timely boost to its awards-season roster after acquiring US rights — beat- ing out interested rivals including The Weinstein Company — to Steve McQueen’s Shame. The acclaimed sex-addiction


drama, which had its world pre- miere in Venice and has its North American premiere here tomor- row, stars Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan. HanWay handles


Hubert Boesl


sales on the See-Saw Films pro- duction. Meanwhile Anchor Bay has


taken all English-speaking territo- ries on Jennifer Lynch’s serial killer project Chained, as a fl urry of deals emerged yesterday. Acquisitions teams are circling


Emmett/Furla’s Broken City, the $50m crime thriller boasting the A-list duo of Russell Crowe and Mark Wahlberg. Allen Hughes will direct later this year; WME repre- sents domestic rights and Inferno is selling international.


Anchor Bay moved on Chained


for the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand after watching an early assembly of Lynch’s dark tale. Vincent D’Onofrio stars alongside Jake Weber, Julia Ormond and Gina Philips. Myriad Pictures is selling international. Also, Image Entertainment has


taken all North American rights to Martin Guigui’s psychological thriller Beneath The Darkness, star- ring Dennis Quaid. It also took all US rights on All Things Fall Apart, which stars Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson.


SCREENINGS What to see today » START PAGE 25


PROFILE Palin the populist Nick Broomfield talks about his time in Wasilla » PAGE 38


Stars line up for CMG’s Zambezia


BY JEREMY KAY Samuel L Jackson, Jeff Goldblum, Abigail Breslin and Leonard Nimoy have joined the voice cast of Triggerfi sh Animation Studios and Cinema Management Group’s (CMG) 3D fi lm Zambezia. Richard E Grant, Jim Cummings,


Brad Pitt, with partner Angelina Jolie, on the red carpet for the premiere of Bennett Miller’s baseball drama, Moneyball


Timeless, Kandor animate Knights “It will be of the same quality


Kandor Graphics in Granada, Spain, and UK outfit Timeless Films are co-producing English- language 3D family animation film Justin And The Knights Of Valour. The film’s voice cast includes


Freddie Highmore, Julie Walters, Mark Strong, Alfred Molina and Antonio Banderas. Manuel Sicilia is directing and


co-writing the original script with UK writer Matthew Jacobs (The Emperor’s New Groove). The story follows a young boy who wishes to fulfil his dream with the help of some friends.


and market potential as the big US animation studios’ films, with the same target audience, but with a more European flavour,” Spain-based producer Kerry Fulton told Screen. Former Icon CEO Ralph Kamp’s


production, sales and finance company Timeless Films is a partner on the project, and has acquired the worldwide distribution rights, excluding Spain. Justin And The Knights Of Valour


is slated for release in 2013. Chris Evans


Colin Firth rides the rails with Teplitzky, Lionsgate


BY WENDY MITCHELL Colin Firth has signed on to star in Jonathan Teplitzky’s The Railway Man for Lionsgate, which takes UK distribution rights and also handles international sales. Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy


Paterson have adapted Eric Lomax’s book, about his torture during the construction of the Death Railway in the Far East dur- ing the Second World War, and his revenge decades later. The project is the first major


investment from Daria Jovicic’s Latitude Media. Producers are


Paterson, Chris Brown and Bill Cur- bishley. Lionsgate UK CEO Zygi Kamasa will executive produce. The Railway Man will start


shooting in February on location in the UK, Thailand and Queensland, Australia. Transmission will dis- tribute in Australia and New Zea- land. The film is an official Australia-UK co-production between Archer Street and Pictures In Paradise. Lionsgate UK CEO Zygi


Kamasa said: “To have Colin Firth in such a compelling story is a real coup for us.”


Jennifer Lewis and Jeremy Suarez are also on board the project, billed as South Africa’s fi rst 3D animated feature and currently in production in Cape Town. CMG has sold to more than 25 territories and licensed rights in Cannes to South Korea (Bloomage), Switzerland (Praessens), Israel (Film House), Venezuela (Blancica) and India (Pictureworks). CMG is also han- dling sales on Triggerfi sh’s Khumba.


Voltage bulks up


NEWS Working for the weekend Kate Winslet signs on for Jason Reitman’s Labor Day » PAGE 6


REVIEWS Tasmanian devil Willem Dafoe delivers an intense performance in The Hunter » PAGE 12


on Company cast Stanley Tucci and Chris Cooper have joined the cast of The Company You Keep, which Voltage Pictures is selling here. Robert Redford will direct, and


stars alongside Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte and Brit Marling. Lem Dobbs adapted from the


novel by Neil Gordon about a former member of the radical group Weather Underground. Redford is producing with


Voltage chief Nicolas Chartier and Bill Holderman.


Jeremy Kay


ISSUE 2


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