| Mike Goodridge in Los Angeles 24 Apr 2009 06:30
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| Summit Entertainment is presenting four new titles to buyers at Cannes this year including two new Summit productions - a romantic drama starring Twilight sensation Robert Pattinson and a generational love story set in Italy starring Amanda Seyfried.
Pattinson is starring in Remember Me which is shooting this summer in New York while the actor is between Twilight sequels New Moon, which wraps at the end of May, and Eclipse, which starts in August.
Allen Coulter, the award-winning TV director (The Sopranos, Damages) who made his feature debut with Hollywoodland in 2006, is directing the film and Nick Osborne and Trevor Engelson of Underground Films (License To Wed) are producing.
Summit co-chairman and CEO Patrick Wachsberger wouldn’t go into too much detail on the plot but described the film as this generation’s Love Story. A female lead is in the process of being cast, while Rachel Getting Married writer Jenny Lumet has finished the latest draft of the screenplay.
Meanwhile Gary Winick (Bride Wars, 13 Going On 30) is directing Letters To Juliet which stars Seyfried as an American girl in Italy who discovers the legend of the “letters to Juliet” – love letters which visitors leave in the wall of Juliet’s courtyard in Verona which are individually answered by a group of women called the secretaries of Juliet. While at the wall, the girl discovers a letter written in 1958 which has never been picked up and she decides to go on a quest to find the lovers in question.
UK writer Tim Sullivan wrote the screenplay from an original draft by Jose Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries). Ellen Barkin whose Applehead Productions originally brought the concept to Summit’s attention is producing alongside Mark Canton.
An English romantic lead for Seyfried is currently being cast while two distinguished actors are being finalized to play the older couple. Wachsberger said the tone was in the vein of Four Weddings And A Funeral but with “a lot of emotion.”
Summit will handle domestic distribution on both these films and they will go through its international output partners including E1 in the UK, SND in France and Concorde/TMG in Germany.
Summit is also representing sales on two productions from Bill Pohlad’s River Road Entertainment – Doug Liman’s Fair Game featuring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts and The Runaways, a biopic of the 70s girl band starring Twilight’s Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett.
Fair Game, which reunites Summit with Mr & Mrs Smith director Liman, is a true life drama about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson after her husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson accused the US government of manipulating evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq. It starts shooting next week.
The Runaways is being directed by first timer Floria Sigismondi and produced by Art Linson. Dakota Fanning (who also has a role in New Moon) is scheduled to co-star alongside Stewart playing Runaways lead singer Cheri Currie.
Summit previously handled sales on River Road’s Tree Of Life directed by Terrence Malick and starring Brad Pitt and Penn which opens at the end of this year.
Also on Summit’s sales lineup is Furry Vengeance, a live action family comedy starring Brendan Fraser and directed by Roger Kumble which Summit is co-financing with Participant Media.
Going into production this summer is Summit’s Step Up 3 which Disney will open domestically in Aug 2010.
New Moon directed by Chris Weitz is set to open in North America on Nov 20, while the third film, Eclipse, to be directed by David Slade, will open on June 30, 2010.
The first film in the series Twilight has now grossed over $380m worldwide. Meanwhile Summit’s Knowing starring Nicolas Cage has just crossed $100m worldwide |
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