19/11/2002 - After the Parisian setting of Femme Fatale, American director Brian De Palma is to make Toyer in Italy

Brian De Palma’s gone European. His latest film, Femme Fatale, is about to be released in most of Europe and the American director announced that his next one will be made in Italy. “I enjoy discovering new places and experiencing new cultures,” said De Palma. “I had so much fun making Femme Fatale in Paris that I decided to stay on in Europe; there’s a wealth of talent I’d like to work with, and, to a certain degree exploit, over here.”
Entitled Toyer, De Palma’s next project is an adaptation of the eponymous play and a horror story set in Venice at Carnival time. The interiors will be shot in the recently revamped Roma Studios (formerly Dinocittà). “This is not the first time I’ll be making a film in Italy; in 1975 I shot the externals of Obsession in Florence. However I’ve never worked in Rome. Martin Scorsese told me about his positive experience while making The Gangs of New York and I hope to experience something similar.”
Produced by Tarak Ben Ammar, Toyer is scheduled to go into production in the spring of 2003. Although De Palma was tight-lipped about the cast, he said that the overwhelming majority of the crew will be Italian.

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