30/10/2009

Optimum Releasing’s Will Clarke and Danny Perkins and Nira Park and Matthew Justice of Big Talk, the team responsible for hits Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz [+see also:
trailer
film profile], have announced a co-financing and co-production agreement, which will also include Film4, with whom Big Talk have had a partial first-look deal for the last two years.

Optimum will contribute towards Big Talk’s overhead costs and development budget and has committed to co-financing and co-producing projects over an initial two-year period, with Film4 extending its first look deal with Big Talk. Studio Canal will handle international sales, and the films will be distributed through Optimum in the UK, Studio Canal in France and Kinowelt in Germany. Film4 will take UK TV and associated rights.

The first project under the agreement will be Attack the Block, the feature directorial debut by Joe Cornish, co-writer of Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. The film looks at a gang of South London teens defending their tower block against alien attack, with a London shoot expected to start in February 2010. Producers are Park and James Wilson, with Edgar Wright, Justice, Tessa Ross, Clarke and Jenny Borgars as executive producers.

Park said, “This deal will help us on the way to realising our ambitions and those of the talent we are lucky enough to be working with.”

Optimum CEO Will Clarke said, “Attack the Block is one of the most inventive and entertaining scripts we have ever read and a great project to kick off the relationship. We look forward to seeing the film come alive and thrilling audiences around the world.”