AFM 2012: Distro Deals for Home and Stung; New Titles Announced Include Witch Tale Blood Shed and Dracula: The Dark Prince
Screen Daily
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More news from the 2012 AFM: distro deals for Nicholas McCarthy’s Home and Benni Diez’s killer bee thriller Stung plus early info on new witch tale Blood Shed and new vamp flick Dracula: The Dark Prince.
Celluloid Nightmares has struck a multi-territory deal with Wild Bunch on Home, Nicholas McCarthy’s follow-up to Sundance hit The Pact. Wild Bunch will distribute Candlewood Entertainment’s horror film in France, Germany and Spain. Sonny Mallhi is financing and will produce the story of a young woman who investigates mysterious goings-on at a house where she learns the previous tenant unwittingly summoned the devil. UTA Independent Film Group handles North American sales. XYZ Films and Celluloid Nightmares’ Nate Bolotin and Sarah Gabriel negotiated the deal with Wild Bunch.
Bolotin and Celluloid Nightmares have also announced a multi-territory deal with eOne on killer bee thriller Stung covering the UK, Canada, South Africa and Scandinavia, among others. XYZ Films is producing Stung with Germany’s The Rat Pack. Director Benni Diez is preparing to commence production in Europe next spring. Adam Aresty wrote the screenplay about a fancy garden party that goes wrong when a local species of wasp mutates, resulting in an attack by giant insects. It is left to two catering staff to thwart the onslaught and in the process develop a romance. Bolotin negotiated the deal with eOne’s Jo Sweby.
“eOne is a perfect home for Stung, especially given their strong track record with elevated genre films and their deep footprint in these territories,” said XYX partners. “We’re thrilled to have such a quality partner on board at this early stage, as it marks a solid vote of confidence in the vision of Benni Diez and the strength of the entire creative team behind the film.”
Red Sea Media’s genre label Dead Sea Media has closed the four-film deal with Enderby and its genre label Tony-Seven Films. Red Sea and Ton-Seven introduced the titles at AFM and Red Sea will handle international sales.
First to go will be the witch horror film Blood Shed, written and to be directed by Patrick Hasson. Bai Ling and Vida Guerra will star, and Rick Dugdale will produce for Enderby Entertainment alongside Red Sea president Roman Kopelevich. Shooting is scheduled to begin in November. Variety got a bit more info on the storyline, which centers on a loner who moves into a storage facility inhabited by a community of squatters until they are locked in for the night with a deranged demonic witch who hunts them down in search of her lost child.
Paranormal thriller Encounter at NP-9 is based on Todd Ireland’s screenplay set in Siberia and is scheduled to shoot in Slovakia in February.
“From our previous releases we’ve really identified the audiences for our brand, especially through our social media platforms,” said Enderby president Dugdale. “We’re focused on creating a new ‘searchable’ sub-genre for horror fans, and we think we’ve found it. We’re thrilled to move forward on this with Red Sea.”
“After many conversations with Rick Dugdale over the past year, we realized we both believed that genre films should be produced to appeal to their fans first and foremost,” said Kopelevich. “Fans should be taken into consideration before the movie gets shot, not after as is commonly done in Hollywood. That, along with the needs of foreign distributors and broadcasters, was taken into consideration when we greenlit this first production slate.”
Steven Paul has wrapped production on Dracula: The Dark Prince, one of 10 features he has committed to producing in the next 12 months through his group of companies SP Entertainment Group, Crystal Edge and Crystal Sky. Paul’s longtime business consultant Scott Karol will serve as executive producer on the slate.
The vampire project shot in Romania and stars Luke Roberts, Kelly Wenham and Jon Voight as Van Helsing. Pearry Teo directs from a screenplay he co-wrote with Nicole Jones. “It’s a film that will appeal to the legion of Twilight fans around the world,” said Paul. “Our Dracula is a young, good-looking hero who is betrayed by those closest to him and exacts his revenge on a grand scale.”
Also on Paul’s slate is writer-director Shawn Robert Smith’s found footage horror film The 4th Reich scheduled to shoot in the first quarter of 2013.
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