Working Gets Titled
Tim Bevan & Eric Fellner, founders of Working Title, are to be named producers of the year at the Cinema Expo International 2001 in Amsterdam in June. Behind the top two films at the UK box office at the moment, Bevan and Fellner are arguably the most successful producing pair outside the US. Bevan and Fellner told Guardian Unlimited Film that 'we hope to continue making quality films for the enjoyment of audiences around the world'.
Captain Corelli's Manhandling
Talking of which, Captain Corelli - described in this month's Sight and Sound as 'a film whose blandness has given birth to a new category: the natopudding' (not quite sure what that means, but it sounds evil - answers on a postcard, Ed) - disappointed analysts and execs at the box office last weekend. Funny - this time at the Netribution office last week, we were excitedly debating whether or not we could get away with leading our feature on Corelli under the headline 'Corelli - What Went Wrong?'. Not so much worried about forever alienating Universal, Miramax and Working Title, we were more concerned that our forecasts could be wrong and the film might be a huge hit at the box office. Like many an exec before us we tried to figure out what might happen at the cinemas, and full of doubt settled on the more ambiguous titling of 'Corelli - What Happened?'. Anyway, the point being that Corelli failed to hit the top spot, earning UKP1.7m against UKP2.7m for Bridget Jones Diary, now in its third week, and looking set to approach UKP40m when all is counted.
Bridget continues apace stateside as well, remaining second in the charts after The Mummy (shot in the UK, partly set in London and staring Brits aplenty) broke records with a USD68 million opening weekend.
The release of Corelli in Ireland meanwhile earned just IP 100,000 against Bridget's IP 2.5 million after four weeks - the highest gross in Ireland this year. A Buena Vista spokesperson told the Irish Independent that the good weather over the weekend was to blame. Hmm.
Strange to have two British produced features fighting it out at the top of the box office charts - it would seem that release dates were a little too close. How many multi-million pound A-list star-studded adaptations of overwhelmingly successful books can you see in a month? Either way, it adds weight to the argument for a developed vertically integrated studio-style system here - if, like FilmFour, Working Title was a UK distributor as well as producer, such a clash would never have happened.
Welshing Title
A story in the South Wales Echo reports that Working title Films has a UKP6m project to featurise the story of the workers' buy-out at Tower Colliery in a sort of Brassed Off meets Trading Places. Welsh production appears to be slowly finding its feet. According to the North Wales film commission, film production in Wales has generated UKP5m for the local economy since 1998, of which UKP2.8m was spent between April 2000 and 2001. While Sgrin holds a presence at Cannes this year, the regional Welsh film commissions - WDA, WTB and Cardiff Marketing jointly produced a Wales Film Location Map tracking 70 films since 1913. These include such suprises as An American Warewolf in London and even desert sequences from Lawrence of Arabia, part of which was shot on the Merthyr Mawr sand dunes Brigend.
Exclusive - Film Council begin Funding in Earnest
The Film Council's Premiere Fund has announced that it is joining Fragile Films' the Importance of Being Earnest, the fourth film to gain money from the fund. A co-production between Miramax, Ealing Studios, Grosvenor Park, Newmarket Captial and now the Film Council, the films tars Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, Tom Wilkinson, Edward Fox and Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell (the handbag woman). Director Oliver Parker and producer Barnaby 'Spiceworld, Kevin & Perry Go Large' Thompson are looking to replicate the critical and commercial success of An Ideal Husband, also by Wilde and staring Rupert Everett. In an exclusive interview with Netribution, Premiere Fund head Robert Jones said 'I have to say that although I've only seen the rushes of Importance of Being Earnest, Oliver Parker has managed to give it a very modern feel for a period drama. Maybe that's just the luck of Wilde's writing - they're very accessible, very witty and, well, they're just good fun.'
Chico Foster Kane is back again
Imagine Rupert Murdoch buying Carlton and Granada to take control of ITV. Then acquiring Manchester United, and then forming a right-wing political party in coalition with the National Front and standing for government. Then imagine he actually wins. Well Silvio Berlusconi looks set to achieve just that Sunday night with an expected win at the Italian elections.
One of the richest media moguls in the world, Berlosconi not only owns Italy's three largest private TV channels, but a host of newspapers and AC Milan football club. Control of the government will mean the man heads up the country's three state channels as well, allowing for media manipulation not seen on such a scale in Italy since the heady days of Mussolini. Interesting, because one of the key players in the far right party Berlusconi is in coalition with, is Bennito's granddaughter. Cute.
Actually this isn't the first time Silvio has stood for prime-minister - the man, who is fighting his election on an anti-immigrant agenda, previously ran as Prime Minister in 1994, before stepping down on allegations of financial irregularity. Silvio has now managed to discredit the allegations with the claim that they are the 'ramblings of a bunch of lefties' who want to depict Italy as a 'banana republic'. Actually, Silvio, you seem to be doing a pretty good job of that yourself.
Murdoch Foxed by Profit Drop
Talking of moguls - Murdoch's NewsCorp's troubles appear far from over with reports on Wednesday that income has fallen 14% and profits will be worse than expected in the third quarter. The company has had a string of problems in recent months, from the struggling negotiations with Hughes over the merger with US satellite giant DirecTV to serious Internet based losses. The company blamed economic conditions, the cost of customer acquisition for BSkyB and a weak box office performance for Twentieth Century Fox. Netribution has little sympathy for Fox's woes - Murdoch mercilessly ditched the excellent erstwhile chief Bill Mechanic - who brought to the studio Titanic, the Full Monty, The Thin Red Line and X-Men - after disappointment from Titan AE and Anna and the King. The same short-termist thinking would have ditched Spielberg after Always and Soderbergh after any of his films before Out of Sight.
The Phantom Webber
The Daily Telegraph reported this week that the screen adaptation of The Phantom of the Weber is nearing completion. Casting for the film has yet to be announced, but reports have long suggested Antonio Banderas is the favourite. The film is scripted by Ben Elton in his reincarnation as 'Daily Mail-styled brown-nosing buck-chaser' as friends describe the 'comedian'.
Cannes not Short on Brits
Irvine Allen - director of top short Daddy's Girl - is the only British director vying for a Palme D'Or. The film joins Cardiff based Steve Sullivan's A Heap of Trouble, which has been selected for the International Critics' Week. The three-minute film is one of 10 short films made under the Sgrin's Screen Gems umbrella and tells of a group of nine naked men marching down a suburban street on a quiet summer's afternoon. Also selected for Critics' Week is Intolerance, backed by the LFVDA. Apologies to all of these filmmakers for not shouting about them sooner.
Prawnography
Hitting Cannes and the headlines this week is Crust - the debut film from Little Wing Films. The privately backed company is touting five pictures at Cannes, with a roster that includes Emily Woof, Amanda Donahoe, Honor Blackman, Matthew Rhys, John Hurt and David Seul. Most interesting of these films is Crust, which hit the back page of Screen International last week, and tells the story of 7ft boxing shrimp and features Ulrika Jonsson and Kevin McNally. Directed by first-timer Mark Locke and produced by Nick O'Hagan, the film has already attracted the eye of Neil Norman who dedicated a full page in the Evening Standard on Tuesday to hype the film. Little Wing Films is headed by Keith Haley, who exec'd on Waking Ned; and former city boys Robert Bevan and Charlie Saville.
Not-a-lot from Scot-Lott
While we try and avoid all those stories about the failure of state investment to have an impact on the success of British films because, well, an industry isn't reborn over night, we can't help but report on a story from the online version of The Scotsman. One Scottish film - Life of Stuff - received a lottery grant of UKP1 million and sold a whopping 304 tickets at the UK box office. As the article pointed out, that amounts to subsidy of over UKP3,000 per ticket. What we want to know is, surely the cast and crew and their partners and spouses must have numbered more than 304? Just how many friends does the director have?
