From Hollywood to Turin: American film companies at the IBF 2009
April, 24 2009
- Merideth Finn, vice-president of production and development at New Line Cinema, recently involved in the adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth and in the production of My Sister’s Keeper, the movie from the novel by Jodi Picoult, starring Cameron Diaz and Alec Baldwin. The company is also producing Dewey, based on the bestselling nonfiction book by Vicki Myron & Bret Witter, starring Meryl Streep.
- Nina Wolarsky, Senior Vice President of Smokehouse, the production company founded by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, currently developing The Challenge (from the novel by Jonathan Mahler published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a publishing house that will be present at IBF09)
- Anna Kokourina from Fox International is looking for books that can be developed into feature films in various countries, and she is also looking for comic books and graphic novels, a genre that will be represented at IBF 2009 by four European publishers: Standaard Uitgeverij / Manteau (Belgium), Silvester (Holland), Dargaud and Delcourt (France). Fox International is currently working in Germany on the production of Chasing Yesterday, from the thriller written by Robin Wasserman, and in India is developing the adaptation of the soon-to-be published novel by Phillippe Diederich, The Habana Chicken Club.
- Brian Lipson from Endeavor, the Hollywood-based talent agency that represents some of the most important American writers, directors and actors, including Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Ben Affleck, Dustin Hoffman and Jonathan Lethem
- Richard Green, co-director of the literature department of the Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles, representing actors, directors and writers like M. Night Shyamalan, James Mangold and Nora Ephron.
- From Canada we are expecting Jeannette Garcia from Cirrus Communication and Gabriella Martinelli, producer and CEO of Capri Film, the Toronto-based film company currently developing an adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s novel Cocksure.
