Independent goes for Bernard Rose’s Mr Nice
by Annika Pham
Independent Film Company, headed by director/producer Luc Roeg, will produce and handle world distribution on Mr Nice, the new feature film by UK established filmmaker Bernard Rose (Candyman).
As part of the deal completed in Cannes and announced yesterday, the project will be released in the UK by Contender Films and in Canada by Seville Pictures, both owned by Entertainment One Ltd.
The deal was negotiated by Independent’s Head of Sales Abigail Walsh and MD Andrew Orr, with Alex Hamilton and Jo Sweby, director and acquisitions manager of Contender Films, respectively. The film is based on the eponymous autobiography of drug baron Howard Marks, who was one of Britain’s most wanted men in the 1980s and spent seven years in a US penitentiary. Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill) will be ‘Mr Nice’. The project will go into production at the end of 2008.
“I am so excited about bringing this fantastic story to the screen and Contender are the perfect partner to do that with. They understand the film we want to make and can see real commercial value,” said Roeg.
Rose’s latest feature film, The Kreutzer Sonata, starring Danny Huston and Anjelica Huston, is one of four titles in post-production introduced to world buyers in Cannes as promo-reels. The other films are New Town Killers by Richard Jobson (16 Years of Alcohol), starring Dougray Scott and Alastair Mackenzie; Moon, the directorial debut of Duncan Jones featuring Sam Rockwell; and Adulthood by Noel Clarke, the sequel to the successful Kidulthood [+see also:
trailer
film profile].
Roeg’s own new feature film project Night Train, executive produced by Steven Soderbergh, starring Elisabeth Shue and Nick Nolte, is currently in pre-production.
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