Prospective blockbusters are not usually built this way. From the NY Times

Rob Moore, the executive who oversees Paramount Pictures' marketing and distribution operations, had an open date in his movie schedule. He had just watched a little step-dancing film called "Stomp the Yard" clean up over last year's Martin Luther King's Birthday weekend, and he figured his company could do the same if it had some cheap popcorn fare ready for the holiday in 2008.

J. J. Abrams, meanwhile, had a theory. Best known as one of the creators of the television series "Lost," Mr. Abrams figured he could make the modern-day equivalent of "Godzilla" for $25 million or less, if he hired a bunch of no-name actors, shot much of the movie with a single $1,500 hand-held camera and threw the rest of his cash into special effects.

And Brad Grey, chairman of the Paramount Motion Picture Group, had an itch. Imagining himself following in the footsteps of the movie moguls Lew Wasserman and Sidney Sheinberg in the days when they took a budding Steven Spielberg and his fledgling company under their wing at Universal, Mr. Grey remembers telling Mr. Abrams: "I'm going to be Sid and Lew, and you're going to be Steven."

The BBC has joined forces with French film studio Pathe to co-produce a $50m (£24.8m) movie based on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. The film will be shot as live action and CGI techniques will be used to appear to make the animals in the story talk. Director is to be BBC natural history filmmaker John Downer, who filmed the Emmy-nominated drama documentary Pride. Michelle Fox will produce for John Downer Productions.

iceni, a Midlands business video production and broadcast design agency, is celebrating after scooping two awards at the prestigious US International Film and Video Festival in Hollywood. This takes the company’s worldwide award haul to fifteen in 2006 and 2007. 

The Staffordshire based production company received Certificates of Creative Excellence in the Advertising / Marketing category for promotional work for Teka and the Environmental Issues and Concerns category for a creative energy saving drama produced for Birmingham City Council. The awards from Hollywood join trophies from the New York Film and Video Festival and the CiB*, a coveted IVCA** award, and an Every Child Matters and Creative Curriculum award from the government’s Creative Partnerships programme.

After Devils Gate, The Blackening finally set to shoot in April, with possibly two more to come from Fresh Paint Pictures 

Leslie Lowes, tireless champion of both British indie film and the Shetland Islands should be celebrating a double win with the announcement of a new HiDef feature to be shot on the Islands over the next year after producer Alec Bruce completed financing on The Blackening, with two more films slated.

Development on The Blackening by Leslie's Penultimate Productions and Bruce's London-based Fresh Paint Pictures  was funded by Scottish Screen's NewFoundLands scheme four years ago and was featured in the first Film Funding Book (the Banana Book). Now as I'm putting the finishing touches to a new funding book, to see the film finally materialise, alongside a possible further two films is just fantastic news, and a great credit to Lowes and Bruce and indeed the scheme. Funding is coming from Sweden, Norway and the UK with a US major lined up for distribution. The three films will shoot on HiDef, without which the location may have been to remote to be cost effective with the cost of sending daily film rushes back to the mainland.

The films are to be produced  at a low-cost production centre in the former RAF base in the northernmost Shetland island of Unst. Shetland producer Leslie Lowes says Penultimate is pleased to have worked closely with Fresh Paint for several years to realise the company’s plans and says it demonstrates that with the right encouragement and support, film companies are keen to locate productions in Shetland.

“Including Devils Gate, which we located to Shetland in 2001 and now Fresh Paint’s slate of  The Blackening, Little Dallas and Kinky Cottage, we have managed to attract almost £4m of film production into the islands. This confirms what we have always maintained: Shetland’s landscapes, seascapes and skyscapes are very attractive to international filmmakers, despite the reservations of some agencies that could be helping them locate here,”  Mr Lowes said. “Marketing Shetland as a film location is most effective when it is done from Shetland from a base of real local knowledge.

Not content with their first feature film, Gypo raking in a number of awards and international critical acclaim, releasing on DVD  February 12^th, Medb films have opened their new post production studios in Ramsgate, Kent, just an hour and half from London and for qouta purposes, beyond that crucial M25 ring road.

"We wanted to create a one stop shop for other small indie companies like ourselves needing the all important last part of the puzzle by creating a low cost, high end facility aimed at other people like us" explains producer, Elaine Wickham.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ashvin Kumar as in the final throes of finishing his latest film, The Forest. And by all accounts it should be a top-notch thriller, but it offers much, much more than rising hairs on the back of the neck as his Ashvin Kumar's personal blog shows...

The Forest is a thriller with an environmental conscience. Instead of preaching to the converted (as wildlife documentaries do), I thought that I need to / could do something significant about the wildlife crisis that is staring us in the face, not only global warming and devastating effects of destruction on the planet, but focus on the most callous destruction of all - poaching, killing animals for skins and bones - to satisfy some ancient quirk of distant Chinese and Tibetan patrons.

Jordan, hemmed in between Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Palestine is facing many challenges, since our country is growing in many sectors and fields, such as the economy, and filmmaking, where the country is witnessing the birth of digital filmmaking, with the media industry in Jordan adapting to the new technology to achieve the highest standards.

Sandra Kawar Samain a Producer & Director from Jordan tells us more...