By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

IMAGE ENTERTAINMENT ACQUIRES HAMMER’S THE RESIDENT STARRING ACADEMY AWARD® WINNING ACTRESS HILARY SWANK

Posted Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 - Comments Off on IMAGE ENTERTAINMENT ACQUIRES HAMMER’S THE RESIDENT STARRING ACADEMY AWARD® WINNING ACTRESS HILARY SWANK
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LOS ANGELES, CA (November 9, 2010) — Image Entertainment, Inc. (OTCQB : DISK) has acquired all U.S. rights to Hilary Swank-starrer The Resident from Exclusive Media Group’s Hammer Films (“Hammer”).  In addition to two time Academy Award® winner Swank, The Resident also stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen, P.S. I Love You), Hammer Films icon Sir Christopher Lee (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings, Dracula) and Lee Pace (A Single Man, The Good Shepherd).  The Resident was directed by Antti Jokinen.  Bill Bromiley, Chief Acquisitions Officer for Image Entertainment, made today’s announcement.  The film will be released theatrically in Spring 2011.

The Resident tells the story of a beautiful young doctor (Swank) who begins a new life in Brooklyn after separating from her husband.  Her stunning and spacious loft seems too good to be true, and when mysterious occurrences lead her to believe she’s not alone, she discovers the unthinkable…someone is watching her.

“The accomplished cast and creative team behind the film have done an extraordinary job in bringing this compelling and thrilling story to life,” stated Bromiley.  “We are proud to be a part of the new Hammer family and excited to be working with the team at Exclusive Media with their exceptional track record.”

Simon Oakes, Vice Chairman of Exclusive and President & CEO of Hammer, said: “The Resident is another film in the grand tradition of Hammer that offers up quality genre pictures with big name talent, as is the case here with two-time Oscar® winner Hilary Swank.  We look forward to working with the entire Image Entertainment team as we now take this film to audiences across the U.S.”

Exclusive Films International is handling foreign sales on The Resident.

Exclusive’s Hammer label is currently in production on James Watkins’ The Woman in Black, starring Daniel Radcliffe (of Harry Potter fame) with a screenplay by Jane Goldman (Kick Ass), based on the best-selling novel by Susan Hill. The company also produced Matt Reeves’ Let Me In starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz, Elias Koteas and Richard Jenkins (produced through the Hammer Films label, and released by Overture Films); and Peter Weir’s The Way Back starring Ed Harris, Jim Sturgess, Saoirse Ronan, Mark Strong and Colin Farrell (which Exclusive’s Newmarket Films distribution label will release later this year).

Exclusive has also just announced two new high profile projects: the company will co-finance and co-produce George Clooney’s The Ides of March, based on the award-winning play by Beau Willimon, and starring Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, and Evan Rachel Wood; and the company will produce and fully finance the action comedy So Undercover with worldwide superstar Miley Cyrus in the lead role.  The film will be directed by Tom Vaughan (What Happens in Vegas), and the screenplay is co-written by Allan Loeb and Steven Pearl.

IMAGE ENTERTAINMENT

Image Entertainment, Inc. (OTCQB: DISK) is a leading independent licensee and distributor of entertainment programming in North America, with approximately 3,000 exclusive DVD titles and approximately 340 exclusive CD titles in domestic release and more than 450 programs internationally via sublicense agreements. For many of its titles, the Company has exclusive audio and broadcast rights, as well as digital download rights to over 2,100 video programs and approximately 400 audio titles containing more than 5,600 individual tracks. The Company is headquartered in Chatsworth, California. For more information about Image Entertainment, Inc., please go to www.image-entertainment.com.

ABOUT HAMMER FILMS (“HAMMER”)

Hammer was launched in 1934 and delivered a hugely successful run of films throughout the 1950’s including Gothic classics Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein as well as sci-fi picture The Quatermass Xperiment. This output gave Hammer a legendary reputation which lead the studio to become branded worldwide as “Hammer House of Horror”. In the 1960’s Hammer struck distribution deals with Universal, Warner Brothers, Fox and Columbia. This enabled Hammer to produce another huge catalogue of films including, The Plague of the Zombies, The Nanny, Quatermass and the Pit, The Devil Rides Out and One Million Years B.C.

Hammer is now a London based production subsidiary of Exclusive Media Group (Exclusive) who are working to aggressively reinvigorate the brand, which has not been in production since the 1980’s, through new investment in the development and production of film, television and digital-platform content.  As a result Hammer’s return has been heralded by the release of Let Me In, its first film in over 30 years.  Let Me In is an adaptation of the highly acclaimed Swedish film, Lat den Ratte Komma In, a.k.a. Let the Right One In, written and directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) and starring Chloe Moretz (Kick Ass) and Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road), now out in the US, France, Australia, Spain and will be released in the UK (5 Nov).

Today, Hammer also has an active development slate across diverse genres sourced out of both Europe and the United States. Key titles currently include: Antti Jokinen’s The Resident starring two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen) and Hammer stalwart Sir Christopher Lee (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings, Dracula), and The Woman in Black, currently in production and starring Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), script by Jane Goldman (Kick Ass), director James Watkins (Eden Lake).

ABOUT EXCLUSIVE MEDIA GROUP (“EXCLUSIVE”)

Exclusive Media Group is a vertically integrated independent film studio which was founded by strategic investment group, Cyrte Investments, in May 2008 Exclusive comprises:

  1. Three development & production labels –
  • Exclusive Films, whose maiden production is Peter Weir’s The Way Back and who will also co-finance and co-produce George Clooney’s The Ides of March, and fully finance and produce the Miley Cyrus action comedy So UnderCover.
  • Hammer Films, the iconic brand which already has Let Me In in release, and The Resident being readied for release.
  • Spitfire Pictures, which has become the specialist documentary film production house.
  1. US theatrical distributor – Newmarket Films.

3.   International Sales & Marketing Operation for in-house and third party product – Exclusive Films International.

  1. Exclusive Films International also monetizes a significant film library of over 550 film titles.

Exclusive is run by Co-Chairmen Nigel Sinclair and Guy East.  Sinclair also serves as Group CEO and President of Newmarket Films, East as Chairman of Exclusive Films International.  Simon Oakes serves as Vice-Chairman of the Group Board as well as President and CEO of Hammer.  Marc Schipper and Andy Mayson serve on the Executive Board, as COO and Managing Director/CFO respectively, overseeing the operations, finance and strategic development of the worldwide group  Exclusive’s strategy is to build a vertically integrated global film entertainment group which develops and controls its own intellectual property and exploits it on a cross-media basis in the digitally converged era.  Exclusive has an active development slate and produces, finances and markets 3-5 high-quality commercial feature films and documentaries per year under its three production labels.  Exclusive actively acquires further feature films for international distribution through Exclusive Films International, and for US theatrical distribution through Newmarket Films.  The Group also develops and produces projects for television and digital platforms.

Exclusive continues to actively explore strategic expansion through M&A transactions and joint ventures – specific focus is on the acquisition of further high-quality film libraries and local territory distribution.

www.exclusivemedia.com

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
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