30/03/2005 - The UK based development and production company Celador Films is in final stages of post-production of its third feature film The Descent, Neil Marshall’s follow up his 2002 hit Dog Soldiers.

The UK based development and production company Celador Films is in final stages of post-production of its third feature film The Descent, Neil Marshall’s follow up his 2002 hit Dog Soldiers. The film written by the director, tells the story of an all female caving expedition that goes terrifyingly wrong. According to Marshall it will be a “Deliverance goes underground” type of film, much darker, scarier and nastier than many of the recent horror films. In the lead roles are Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid and Saskia Mulder.
The £3.5M film fully-financed by Celador Films was produced by Christian Colson executive produced by Celador’s chairman Paul Smith and co-produced by Paul Ritchie. The film is sold internationally by Pathe UK who will also handle the UK release.

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The film company founded by Paul Smith, creator of world famous game show ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’, made a successful entrance in the film world in 1999 with the production of Stephen Frear’s Dirty Pretty Things. Its second feature film Separate Lives, the directorial debut of British Oscar winning-writer Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park), stars Emily Watson, Tom Wilkinson and Rupert Everett. The story of an apparent perfect marriage that hits the rocks when a third party enters the picture, will be released this year by Fox Searchlight who co-financed the project.
The production of Separate Lives was supervised by Celador Film’s Christian Colson who joined the company from Miramax in 2002, and who has just been promoted to the position of Joint Managing Director of Celador Films, a role shared with Paul Smith.

Other projects in development include The Unequalled Self, Adrian Hodges adaptation of Claire Tomalin’s award winning biography of 17th century diarist Samuel Pepys, Once More With Feeling, a sex comedy written by Ayub Khan Din (East Is East), and Big Deal, an adaptation of Anthony Holden’s account of his year in the professional poker circuit.