Compiled by Terry Bourke United States
Independent and studio production in the U.S. has accelerated in recent months, and an average of five films a week are being com pleted. The production of non-union low-budget films between $285,000 and $1.4 million has in creased, and the major studios are spending between $2.9 million to $14.6 million on their latest films. Foreign producers are using American loca tions with Increasing regularity, avoiding costly and troubled European locations. Bruno Corbuci is in Miami and Fort Lauder dale directing Ernest Borgnine and Terence Hill in the action-drama Harry, The Supercop, an Italian-financed production: Germany's Klaus Furhman is directing Nadine Gray, Horst Frank and Lili Laves in New Orleans-based The Last Time. France’s Alain Neuville is In New York shooting subway sequences for Leonie; while Egypt’s Bruno Herbek has chosen Nebraska for his farmland -segments of Return to the Land. John Guillerman is directing The Lion Feeds (on A frican locations, and in Am erican studios); Norman Jewison, Best Friends; Woody Allen is shooting his latest New York film under the title, A Woody Allen Film; Robert Altman is about to move to Malta for an earlyJanuary start of Popeye, starring Robin (Mork) W illiams; Michael Nankin is writing and directing Midnight Madness for Walt Disney Studios. Allan Carr is producing Nancy Walker’s Can’t Stop the Music; Shirley Maclaine and Anthony Hopkins are starring in Consenting Adults directed by Noel Black; Walter Hall is directing The Long Riders in Georgia; Michael Pressman, Those Lips, Those Eyes; Don Coscarelli Is directing Shapes for Avco Embas sy; and Michael O’Herlihy is back from Ireland where he has been filming The Flame is Love. Roger Vadim is preparing to start The God Daughter (it is now two years since he did Night Games in the Philippines); Wes Craven is directing Deadly Blessing for Max Keller’s Inter-Planetary Pictures. Paul Aaron is directing The Osterman Weekend; Barbra Streisand is to make her debut as a director with Fancy Hardware, a love-story involving an airline pilot and a spinster; Ridley Scott (who directed Alien) Is about to start The Knight; Neil Israel is to write and direct a sequel to Americathon called The Jerry Years; Michael Apted (who directed Dustin Hoffman, Vanessa Redgrave and Helen Morse in Agatha) is preparing Kincaid’s Old Lady for MGM. Menahem Golan is directing The Year of the Cat; Don Taylor Final Countdown, starring Kirk Douglas; Ulu G rosbard, Children, Children, adapted from the Japanese classic Tokyo Story; John Carpenter (the director of Halloween, and Assault on Precinct 13) is making The Fog; and Sean Cunningham has started Friday the 13th In New Jersey (which will mean a title change for Sydney director Peter Maxwell’s film of the same name, soon to start in Queensland). Australia’s Marilyn Monroe look-alike, Linda Kerridge, is to star in Fade to Black, directed by Vernon Zimmerman In Los Angeles. The film is about a film buff who can’t separate reality from fantasy. Robert Scheerer is directing How To Beat The High Cost of Living; Ken Annaking is directing Coco Chanel; Alan Levy has started One Man’s Candy; and Michael Anderson has been lined up to direct The Cult. Robert Aldrich is preparing Seven Day Soldiers for a late-November start in Britain, but plans to do the post-production in Hollywood. John C assavetes is d ire c tin g Gena Rowlands in One Summer Night; John Frankenheimer is making Destinies; Harold Backer, The Black Marble; Alan Parker is directing Fame for MGM; Larry Peerce, Why Would I Lie?; Mike Levis, Oak Boy; George Bloomfield, Saving Grace; George Edwards, The Attic; Buzz Kulik, The Hunter, starring Steve McQueen; and Jack Hofsiss, After Mid night. Tom Kotani is directing The Ivory Ape in Bermuda; Robert Moore is directing James
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Caan in Chapter Two; Ted Roter is shooting A Small Case of Rape in Los Angeles and San Francisco; Herb Freed, Beyond Evil; Jon Peters is producing Caddyshack, starring Chevy Chase, directed by Harold Ramis. Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly are to star In Xanadu, to be directed by Robert Greenwald; Lily Tomlin has been lined up for Joel Schumacher’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman; James Gllckenhaus to direct The Exterminator; Bernard Girard, We’re All Crazy Now; Paul Glicker, Running Scared; Robert Downey, The Brave Young Men of Weinberg; and Joe Gage, L.A. Tool and Die. Canada
The Canadian film industry has expanded rapidly this year, and is now the third largest p ro d u ce r of film s for E nglish-speaking countries, after the U.S. and Britain. In the past 12 months Canadian films have accrued more than $36 million in local box office and worldwide sales. Of this, about $17.6 million came from deals negotiated at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival in May. (In comparison the 16 Australian films at Cannes this year sold for $1.2 million.) With investment from the Canadian Film Development Corporation at a record level (reported to exceed $14.9 million so far this year) and major co-productions with the U.S., Mexico, Japan, Britain and France, Canada will probably overtake the British industry grosses within two to three years. Among the big money-earners for Canada are — Fast Company, Agency, Meatballs, City on Fire (featuring Sydney stuntman Grant Page), Running, A Man Called Intrepid, Silent Partners, Fish Hawk and Claude Lelouch’s An Adventure for Two. At least 15 features were in production in September and October throughout Canada, including Superman II. Richard Donner (who is to be credited as director) finished principal photography on Superman II almost five months ago, and Richard Lester has been shooting pick-up shots and linking footage, with the final scenes at Niagara Falls. Paui Almond has replaced Silvio Narizzano as the director of Final Assignment in Montreal after what producer Larry Hertzog termed “creative differences". Robin Spry, the director of One Man, is directing Jennifer Dale in Suzanne. Jules Das sin is directing Circle of Two, starring Richard Burton and Tatum O’Neal, with locations in Toronto; Steven Stern, whose Running is being released by Universal at Christmas, is using Canadian locations for Fathers, Daughters and Other Endangered Species. Producers John Kemeny, Denis Heroux and Joseph Beaubin have scheduled three films for Canadian locations over the next seven months. The first to be made is Daniel Mann’s The Incredible Mrs Chadwick, starring Shirley Maclaine, followed by Louis Malle’s The Neigh bour and Don Shebib’s Popgun. Raymond Burr is to star in CeBe for writerdirector Leonard Yakir in Vancouver; and
Japanese director Kenji Fikasaku will spend January and February in Toronto’s Kleinberg Studios completing Interiors for Virus. The award-winning Israeli director Yaky Yosha is on location in Canada for the $3 million Adam Resurrected, a Canadian-lsraeli co-production depicting the days when a German clown entertained Jews going to their death. Peter Carter is directing Highpoint, starring Richard Harris and Katherine Ross, produced by Bill Immerman (formerly production chief of AIP and 20th Century-Fox television in Los Angeles). Paul Almond’s The Burning Book, which was to star Richard Harris, has been cancelled after the producers failed to Interest public subscribers in the $7.75 million production. William Fruet is producing and directing Cries in the Night in Toronto; Bob Clark has been named to direct a $10 million version of best-selling author Robert Ludlum ’s The Matarese Circle; producer-director George Mendeluk is preparing The Kidnapping of The President, to be shot In Toronto. Canada’s first musical feature, the $2.5 million Fantastica, is under way in Quebec, starring Carol Laure and John Vernon. It is directed by Gilles Carle, who also wrote the script. A Canadian-French venture, it will have English and French versions. Allan King is directing Tom Skerritt and Ellen Burstyn in Silence of the North; Harvey Hart has lined up with Timothy Bottoms and Linda Purl in The First Hello; Morley Markson is to direct Milton Berle in Off Your Rocker; Alvin Rakoff, Dirty Tricks; Paul Lynch, Prom Night; Orson Welles is starring in Never Trust An Honest Thief, d ire c te d by G eorge McGowan, and shooting in Toronto and Las Vegas.
Mike Newell is shooting The Waking, starring Charlton Heston, on location in Egypt, with studio work and editing in London; John Hough is to make A Watcher in the Woods for Walt Disney Studios, starring Bette Davis and Carroll Baker. Former Cinema International Corporation sales executive Rodney Webb is planning to produce a dolphin drama called Dorado, which he hopes to shoot in Sardinia and Australia. Director James K. Shea is preparing Swords of Sorcery for production; Mike Hodges is still shooting Flash Gordon at Shepperton and Elstree Studios fo r Dino de Laurentiis; Gabrielle Beaumont is directing The Godsend in London; Alan Bridges has started shooting Very Like A Whale in London and soon New York, starring Alan Bates; John Boorman is producing and directing Merlin and the Knights of King Arthur with locations in London and Ireland. Don Siegel who was dismissed as director of Rough Cut is back. Shooting has gone smoothly since his return. Warren Beatty is writing and directing Ten Days That Shook The World, but apparently plans to change the title to Reds; Rod Taylor and Rex Harrison are to star in Matt Cimber's Seven Graves for Rogan to be shot in London, Amsterdam and Paris; Benjl has overcome quarantine problems and will star in Oh, Heavenly Dog in London, Berlin, Paris and several Canadian cities, with Joe Camp directing. Producers Davina Belling and Clive Parsons are to shoot All Conquers Love in New York, with Jonathan Kaufer directing; David Lynch is directing John Hurt and Anne Bancroft in The Elephant Man; and Alan J. Pakula is preparing Sophie’s Choice for Lord Lew Grade, with a script based on Pulitzer Prizewinner William Styron’s novel of the same name.
Britain
The failure of British studios to win contracts for the shooting of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shin ing, Richard Donner’s Superman II, and Lewis Gilbert's Moonraker, did not cause the lull In production that had been expected. Seven new films got underway in July and August, three in September, two in October, and at least three more are set to go before Christmas. * Five Star Five, a $12 million science-fiction epic produced by Gerry Anderson and Sydney Rose, has started 17 weeks of principal shooting at Pinewood Studios, with 20 weeks of special effects to follow in early January. British film mogul Lord Lew Grade, riding high on the worldwide smash hit of The Muppets, has announced a string of big-budgeted films to be made in and around London next year, with some international locations. These include, Raise The Titanic, Sunset Limousine, Green Ice, Trans-Siberian Express, The Golden Gate, The Gemini Contender and a remake of Tale of Two Cities. Ian Eames is writing and directing another Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde; photographer David Bailey is to direct The Gossip Columnist;
Fiona Lindsay and Velese Petaia in Paul Maunder’s Sons for the Return Home.
New Zealand
Sons for the Return Home, the New Zealand film industry’s costliest and most ambitious production to date, is expected to make a ma jor breakthrough in the international market place. The film was financed with a major in vestment by the New Zealand Film Commis sion. Shot on locations in Western Samoa, the North Island and London, by writer-director Paul Maunder, Sons for the Return Home is a contem porary love-story centred on the marriage between a Pacific islander and a white girl. As a best-selling novel of the same name, by Polynesian author Albert Wendt, it caused con siderable interest when it was first published eight years ago. Sons for the Return Home is likely to be New Zealand’s official entry in the 1980 Cannes Film Festival. Another ambitious project for New Zealand is Nutcase, which finished shooting at Takapune Beach, in late-September, and is scheduled for a Christmas release. Nutcase is produced by John Barnett-snd directed by Roger Donaldson from a script by Ian Mune and Keigh Aberdein.
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