CANNES - The Hollywood Reporter

theREPORT
Koch Media
Takes Action
Thriller Drop
By Scott Roxborough
Koch Media has picked
up German rights for
Drop, an in-development
action thriller from Mukunda
Michael Dewil, whose last feature
was the Paul Walker starrer
Vehicle 19 from sales group K5
International. Silke Wilfinger
and Moritz Peters of Koch Media
negotiated the deal with K5’s
Daniel Baur. Koch bought the
project solely based on Dewil’s
screenplay, which sets the action
in Cape Town, South Africa, and
whose plot involves terrorists who
kidnap the U.S. vice president.
“We knew from the moment
we read it that we had to come
onboard such a pure piece of
guilt-free entertainment,” said
Wilfinger and Peters in a statement.
“Mukunda has delivered an
edge-of-your-seat thriller script
that will have German audiences
in its grip from beginning to end.”
Dewil and K5 currently are casting
the film.
James Gray Sets Up Secretive Sci-Fi Thriller
The Cannes regular, back in competition this year with The Immigrant tackles his first genre film
By Pamela McClintock
Filmmaker James Gray,
who is returning this year
to the Cannes Film Festival
with his latest directing effort,
is set to direct a sci-fi thriller for
RT Features.
The logline is being kept
under strict wraps, but it is
known that the We Are the Night
helmer will direct from a script
he co-wrote with Ethan Gross
(Fringe). CAA brokered the
deal and is representing domestic
rights.
RT founder and CEO Rodrigo
Teixeira will serve as producer,
with the company’s Sophie Mas
and Lourenco Sant Anna executive
producing. The Brazil-based RT
Features recently produced Noah
Baumbach’s Frances Ha, starring
Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner and
Adam Driver, and Kelly Reichardt’s
Night Moves, starring Jesse Eisenberg
and Dakota Fanning. Gray is
represented by CAA.
Gray’s upcoming film The
Immigrant, a period piece starring
Jeremy Renner, Joaquin Phoenix,
and Marion Cotillard, will screen
in competition at Cannes May 24.
The Weinstein Co. will distribute
the film in the U.S.
Gray also co-wrote the script to
another competition title, Blood
Ties, a crime drama from French
filmmaker Guillaume Canet which
stars Zoe Saldana, Mila Kunis and
Marion Cotillard.
The Immigrant, explores many
of the same themes of crime and
Gray’s The Immigrant
screens May 24.
honor seen in Gray’s previous
work, but in his new film, the
action is set on the mean streets
of Manhattan, circa 1920.
The film is Grey’s third directing
effort to play in competition
in Cannes, following The Yards,
We Own the Night and Two Lovers.
The only one of his films that
hasn’t graced the Croisette was
his debut, Little Odessa, which
premiered in Venice in 1994.
The Smiths
performing
in 1984.
Radiant Grabs International
Rights to Wild By Rebeeca Ford
L.A. Thriller
to Get Smiths
Soundtrack
By Stuart Kemp
A
contemporary film noir
set to a soundtrack of
covers by L.A. bands of
legendary British group The
Smiths that has Mark Boone Junior
(TV’s Sons of Anarchy) and Sam
Hazeldene (The Monuments Men)
attached to star is tuning up.
It tells the story of a surveillance
contractor who drifts
through Los Angeles at night
photographing cheating couples,
then falls for a jilted wife and
unwittingly photographs her
husband burying the body of a
dead girl.
L.A.-based British filmmaker
Trevor Miller directs with London
music impresario Sean McLusky
producing through the pair’s
U.K.-based production banner
1234 Films. U.S.-based Brink
Films will co-produce.
Radiant Films has picked
up international rights
to the comic drama Wild,
which marks Vivienne DeCourcy’s
feature film directorial debut.
Emma Greenwell (Shameless) will
star as Mary Reynolds, a garden
designer who aims to compete
in the Chelsea Flower show,
a.k.a the Olympics of gardening.
Tom Hughes has been cast as an
environmentalist who helps Mary
pursue garden gold.
CEO Mimi Steinbauer of Radiant
Films, which is shopping
the project at Cannes, calls
DeCourcy’s script “fun and
quirky” and “a great antidote to
today’s toils and troubles.” Gersh
Agency’s Jay Cohen is handling
U.S. rights.
The film will be produced
jointly by Green Earth in the U.S
and Treasure Entertainment and
Crowe’s Nest in Ireland. Rebecca
O’Flanagan and Rob Walpole will
produce from Treasure, and Sarah
Johnson and Chloe Kassis Crowe
will executive produce.
Funded by Green Earth, the
Irish Film Board, RTE and
the Broadcasting Authority of
Ireland, Wild will shoot in both
Ireland and Ethiopia in the
upcoming months.
Newcomer Greenwell currently
plays Mandy Milkovich on
Showtime’s Shameless and has
previously appeared on HBO’s
True Blood. She’s repped by
WME, Troika and Thruline
Entertainment.
British actor Hughes has
appeared on several U.K. TV
shows, and recently wrapped war
thriller I Am Soldier. He’s repped
by UTA and Gordon and French.
Radiant’s slate includes William
H. Macy’s directorial debut Rudderless,
thriller Take Down, Claire
Danes and James Marsden-starrer
As Cool As I Am and Lullaby,
starring Garrett Hedlund, Richard
Jenkins and Amy Adams.
SMITHS: PETER CRONIN/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES. GRAY: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 6