27/02/2007

In its latest round of Development Fund awards, the UK Film Council granted £62,500 to Blowback, a spy satire written by Rupert Walters (Restoration), and £20,960 to the new family animation project Fizzle by writer Richard Vincent (Casualty).

Blowback will be produced by Stephen Garrett (Pure) and Paul Webster (The Motorcycle Diaries [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) for leading independent company Kudos Film & TV. The title refers to the intelligence term given to an operation that creates a threat worse than the one it sets out to counter.

The story of Fizzle has been picked up by Cosgrove Hall, one of UK’s most established animation companies (Postman Pat), from the Development Fund’s 25 Words or Less scheme. Fizzle is a tomboy fairy allergic to her sparkles, which the fairies use to make themselves beautiful. But when her entire fairy village is kidnapped by a cosmetic company who wants the sparkles for human products, Fizzle decides to lead a band of misfit friends into the city to rescue them.

Two other scripts received support from the UK FC. The first, Bad Dog (awarded £13,750), co-written by Sam Walker and Rob Morgan, is to be produced Vertigo Films (The Business) and tells the story of Adam, who is bored with his mediocre life and is under his girlfriend’s thumb. One day, he is drugged by a family of French maniacs who torture him and use him as the family dog.

Hero Trip (awarded £17,500) is a first feature script from James Henry, one of the leading writers for Channel 4’s comedy series Green Win. The Defender, an all-American superhero, is forced to drive his captured arch-nemesis Annihilator across the US to defuse a bomb set to destroy the entire planet. Forced together on this unlikely road trip, the Defender attempts to persuade Annihilator that humanity is worth saving but starts to wonder if they are the right men for the job.