13/01/2006

Neil Jordan’s Irish/UK co-production Breakfast On Pluto [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (see today’s other news story), Michael Winterbottom’s Cock and Bull Story and Juliet McKeon’s feature debut Frozen [+see also:
trailer
film profile] will be able to have a bigger presence on UK screens and larger advertising and promotion budgets thanks to the support from the UK Film Council’s Print and Advertising Fund.

The biggest award of £200,000 was given to Redbus Film Distribution for the release next Friday of Cock And Bull Story, which means that the company will be able to more than double the film’s print run from 60 to 150.
Pathe Distribution for its part was awarded an initial £70,000 for today’s release of Breakfast On Pluto and Guerilla Films £21,000 for Frozen set to open on January 23rd. Another £53,000 was awarded to Icon Film Distributors to help them expand the release of Woody Allen’s Match Point. Released last week on 130 prints, Allen’s first ‘London’ movie had one of the biggest screen average (£5,785) and grossed over £752,000 at the UK box office.

The UK FC’s P&A Fund was re-launched in June 2005 with an annual budget of £2m to support the broader release of specialised films to UK audiences. Films as varied as the UK war parody Guy X by Saul Metzstein released by Tartan Films, the US/French co-production Broken Flowers by Jim Jarmusch released by Momentum Pictures and French documentary hit March Of the Penguin [+see also:
trailer
film profile] released by Warner Bros were among some of the fund’s most recent award recipients. "Our on-going support of strong and striking filmmaking across a wide range of genres stimulates appetite for more specialist films and enhance film culture in this country", said Pete Buckingham, Head of the UK Film Council’s Distribution and Exhibition Department. "We will continue to work with all the distributors to identify how we can support their specialist and more challenging releases and assist them in reaching a wider audience".