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Exclusive: WestEnd inks deal on western starring Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson; first look picture.

WestEnd Films has sold Western By Way of Helena to Weltkino for German-speaking territories.

Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Alice Braga (Elysium) and Emory Cohen (The Place Beyond the Pines). star in director Kieran Darcy Smith’s (Wish You Were Here) drama about a Texas Ranger (Hemsworth) investigating a series of unexplained deaths in a town called Helena.

Matt Cook wrote the screenplay and executive produces.

The film was developed by David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman, who are producing the film under their Mandeville Films banner.

Atomic Entertainment’s Adam Rosenfelt and Maureen Meulen are producing alongside Mandeville, and are also financing. Nathalie Marciano serves as executive producer.

WestEnd’s Efm slate also includes Benedict Andrew’s Blackbird, Jeremy Saulnier’s crime-thriller Green Room and Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea.

Weltkino is the distribution outfit of Kinowelt founder Michael Koelmel and producer...

You can never have too many monster movies, man, and there's another one on its way! Chapman U's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts has picked Trigger as the first project for its micro-budget production shingle Chapman Filmed Entertainment. Read on for details.

From the Press Release:

Chapman Filmed Entertainment, the first-of-its-kind micro-budget production company launched by Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, has announced that its first film production will be the thriller Trigger. The company has optioned the script from Max Enscoe and tapped Chapman alumnus Basel Owies, ’10 M.F.A. Film Production, to direct the feature. The announcement was made today by Bob Bassett, Chapman Entertainment CEO and Dean of Dodge College of Film and Media Arts.

A character-driven thriller, Trigger examines two men fixated on what triggers the enormity of evil: a father whose life is destroyed in pursuit of a monster,...

Exclusive Adam Rosenfelt, the former president of Element Films, has launched a new financing and production company that expects to make three movies per year, TheWrap has learned. Gambit Films will make commercial independent movies with budgets of less than $20 million, Rosenfelt told TheWrap on Friday. Other principals at the firm are the former head of physical production at Element Brian Pitt, and equity partner Dylan Narang. Rosenfelt intends to run Gambit the same way he ran Element. That company produced the 2009 "Kill Theory," the 2007 "Mr. Brooks," the 2005 "Waiting" and others. Rosenfelt,...

Kill Theory joins as #8 in the After Dark Horrorfest: 8 Films to Die For® line-up

Los Angeles, CA (January 8, 2010) — Kill Theory, the eighth and final pick for After Dark Films Horrorfest 4, was announced today by Adf CEO Courtney Solomon.

The national film festival opens January 29, 2010 for one-week in 25 markets.

Kill Theory was written by Kelly Palmer and directed by Chris Moore (Producer, Good Will Hunting and upcoming Adjustment Bureau).

Starring roles are filled by Agnes Bruckner, Patrick Flueger, Taryn Manning, Teddy Dunn, Ryanne Duzich, Daniel Franzese, Theo Rossi, Steffi Wickens, and Kevin Gage. The film was produced by Dan Abrams, Julie Dangel and Amanda White. Adam Rosenfelt, Chris Bender, and Morris Bart also produced.

In Kill Theory, a group of college friends visit a secluded vacation home to celebrate their impending graduation. The fun doesn’t last long, however. Forced to participate in a deadly experiment by a sadistic psychopath, each...

This review was written for the theatrical release of "Mr. Brooks".Pushing coincidence and exaggeration to the point of near comic absurdity, "Mr. Brooks" begins as a steely cool examination of an unlikely serial killer, but it quickly tumbles off that edge into a quagmire of plot gimmicks and writer's tricks. "Brooks" is the second directing gig by screenwriter Bruce A. Evans ("Stand by Me") from a script he wrote with his longtime partner Raynold Gideon. These two are fine studio writers, but, unleashed from the shackles of the studio development system, they succumb to an urge to explore the dark side of life yet do so without dramatic logic or, for that matter, a moral compass.

The film feels sleazy and nasty -- but without the pulp kick of filmmakers who know how to do sleazy and nasty. The two key roles, wallowing in obsession and ambiguity, were superficially juicy enough to attract Kevin Costner (who even produces) and Demi Moore. But they have little to play: The characters are the equivalent of junkies who plunge needles into their veins over and over without the movie giving any reason for the compulsive, self-destructive behavior.

Fans might show up at theaters, but such roles are the kind likely to reduce that fan base. As counterprogramming to the summer silly season, this adult thriller might attract a decent turnout for a couple of weeks, after which the film will become a DVD curio.

Evans' serial killer, Earl Brooks (Costner), isn't just an ordinary guy with a secret life but Portland's Man of the Year in honor of his civic and philanthropic activities. And not just any philanthropist/serial killer but one with his own stalker, a peeping Tom photographer (Dane Cook) who saw him butcher a naked couple having sex, and a daughter (Danielle Panabaker) who comes home from college with a hatchet murder on her resume.

Evans' bulldog police detective Tracy Atwood (Moore) isn't just any ordinary cop but a $60 million heiress who undertakes police work as a hobby. And not just any detective/heiress but one with a nasty divorce that threatens her career and a deranged killer newly escaped from prison who vows revenge against her for putting him away.

Now would you believe that Brooks' stalker doesn't want to turn him into the police but rather wants to go along on his next kill? No? Well, would you believe that the serial killer just happens to spot the deranged killer and his tough-as-nails girlfriend at a convenience store so he can set in motion a plan to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak?

Clearly, this is one busy story but one that never digs beneath the surface in search of motives or insight. Brooks has an alter ego named Marshall who is personified by William Hurt. Marshall plays Id to Brooks' weak Superego, always urging him to be bad and enjoy the ride. The two discuss murder methods and the care to take so as to avoid getting caught. But they never really debate the merits of badness.

The film views the anti-hero's compulsion as an addiction. Brooks even attends AA meetings. And when his daughter gives in to her bloody impulses, he figures she has inherited his "disease." This is as far as any insight goes.

So all the film's characters, real or imagined, are either twisted or depraved save for the peripheral roles of wife (Marg Helgenberger) and cop sidekick (Ruben Santiago-Hudson). They aren't allowed to be very bright, though. One day our Mr. Brooks catches a plane for the Bay Area, performs a hatchet murder to cover up his daughter's tracks, flies back home and crawls into bed next to his wife. She thinks he has been downstairs the whole time playing with his pottery-making. Right.

The filmmaking is sleek and meticulous with well-upholstered sets and insistent mood music. It's all part of that conceit that a trash exploitation movie done with exquisite production values is somehow classy. It's not.

MR. BROOKS

MGM

Eden Rock Media/ElementFilms/Relativity Media/Tig Prods.

Credits:

Director: Bruce A. Evans

Screenwriters: Bruce A. Evans, Raynold Gideon

Producers: Jim Wilson, Kevin Costner, Raynold Gideon

Executive producers: Sam Nazarian, Adam Rosenfelt, Marc Schaberg, Thomas Augsberger

Director of photography: John Lindley

Production designer: Jeffrey Beecroft

Music: Ramin Djawadi

Costume designer: Judianna Makovsky

Editor: Miklos Wright

Cast:

Earl Brooks: Kevin Costner

Detective Tracy Atwood: Demi Moore

Mr. Smith: Dane Cook

Marshall: William Hurt

Emma Brooks: Marg Helgenberger

Hawkins: Ruben Santiago-Hudson

Jane: Danielle Panabaker

Running time -- 120 minutes

MPAA rating: R...

Pride combines the two main themes in the current plethora of sports movies -- the inspirational victory and a Bad News Bears team that goes from ragtag to riches. Throw in historical black empowerment, too, which does occasionally crop up in films like Glory Road. Thus, the problem facing a film like Pride is that it feels like something we saw a month ago. Yes, Terrence Howard delivers another solid lead performance and competition swimming is a new arena for such films. Nonetheless, Pride is just plain trite.

The presence of Howard and popular comedian-actor Bernie Mac, who also is quite good, certainly will help the theatrical release by Lionsgate. Boxoffice probably will be in the midrange with perhaps greater potential on DVD.

The central figure is Jim Ellis, who has coached swim teams composed mostly of blacks from the Philadelphia Department of Recreation for more than 35 years. The screenplay, attributed to a pair of writing teams, Kevin Michael Smith & Michael Gozzard and J. Mills Goodloe & Norman Vance Jr., is a semi-fictional take on the early years when the Marcus Foster Recreational Center suffered from community neglect and was nearly shut down.

Jim (Howard) is no white knight when he initially walks into the graffiti-marred, unkempt facility in 1973. He's just guy who needs a job. In a scene heavy with portent of future showdowns, Jim is denied employment at a white school by a racist coach (Tom Arnold). But he does land a temporary job that amounts to little more than helping to shut down the Marcus Foster Rec Center.

When the city removes the basketball rims from the courts outside, local players drift into the center to discover a remarkably pristine swimming pool. Pretty soon, Jim, who swam competitively in college, is teaching them the butterfly and back strokes. Predictably, the guys are soon eager for competition. And, predictably, their first meet takes place against the preppy Main Line school team coached by Arnold. They get humiliated. One swimmer hits his head against the end of the pool. Another loses his trunks.

So the team buckles down to work, learns to swim much better and gets two more rematches with their nemesis team. In one, the white team refuses to compete in the Rec Center's pool. In the other, a state championship is on the line. The outcome also is predictable.

Howard glides through the story with professional elan, his natural charisma doing most of the work. Bernie Mac for once is playing a character who his not Bernie Mac, and he is terrific as the rec center custodian. Kimberly Elise can't do much with the routine role of a swimmer's sister and a city councilman who has the juice to help the center survive if she so chooses.

The movie supplies both a white and black villain. Along side Arnold's smirking coach is Gary Sturgis' ghetto hood, a character without much dimension or any rationale for harassing a swimming team.

The young actors playing the swimmers aren't given much to work with other than a single defining characteristic -- a stutter for one and glasses indicating braininess for another. But they are attractive actors and solid athletes.

Under the direction of neophyte Sunu Gonera, who might be the first Hollywood director to hail from Zimbabwe, the film is technically proficient. Matthew F. Leonetti's camerawork is polished and fluid, while designer Steve Saklad handles period details well. A soundtrack of Philly Soul -- familiar music from the songwriting team of Gamble and Huff -- makes for great listening.

PRIDE

Lionsgate

Cinerenta/Infinity Media

Credits:

Director: Sunu Gonera

Screenwriters: Kevin Michael Smith, Michael Gozzard, J. Mills Goodloe, Norman Vance Jr.

Story: Kevin Michael Smith, Michael Gozzard

Producers: Brett Forbes, Patrick Rizzotti, Michael Ohoven, Adam Rosenfelt, Paul Hall

Executive producers: Terrence Howard, Victoria Fredrick, Sam Nazarian, Eberhard Kayser, Malcolm Petal, Kimberly C. Anderson, Mike Paseornek, John Sacchi

Cinematographer: Matthew F. Leonetti

Production designer: Steve Saklad

Music: Aaron Zigman

Costume designer: Paul Simmons

Editor: Billy Fox

Cast:

Jim Ellis: Terrence Howard

Elston: Bernie Mac

Sue Davis: Kimberly Elise

Bink: Tom Arnold

Puddin Head: Brandon Fobbs

Walt: Alphonso McAuley

Willie: Regine Nehy

Hakim: Nate Parker

Andre: Kevin Phillips

Running time -- 108 minutes

MPAA rating: PG...

Drake Bell, Kevin Covais, Andrew Caldwell and Haley Bennett are set to star in Element Films and State Street Pictures' youth comedy College, directed by Deb Hagan. Lionsgate will distribute through its long-term distribution deal with Element.

Also in the film are Gary Owens and Ryan Pinkston (Punk'd).

From a screenplay by Dan Callahan and Adam Ellison, College centers on three high school seniors who have the wildest weekend of their lives when they visit a nearby college campus as prospective freshmen. Element is producing in association with State Street Pictures and New Orleans-based LIFT Films.

Element will fully finance the project.

Producers are Element president and co-founder Adam Rosenfelt, vp production and development Julie Dangel and State Street's Robert Teitel. Rene Rigal of State Street will co-produce. Element co-founder Sam Nazarian and Element COO Marc Schaberg will executive produce with Malcolm Petal and Kim Anderson of State Street Pictures.

Bell stars in Nickelodeon's Drake and Josh. Repped by WMA, he most recently starred in Paramount's Yours, Mine and Ours.

Covais was an American Idol contestant in Season 5.

Lionsgate has resurrected "Tulia", the long-gestating Tollin-Robbins project starring Halle Berry as a lawyer investigating an infamous Texas drug bust. The producers are in negotiations with Carl Franklin to direct the feature.

The film centers on the 1999 arrests of 46 black men in the impoverished town of Tulia, Texas -- a sting effort where no money, drugs or illegal weapons were found on any of the suspects. Berry will portray the lead attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which intervened to free the citizens wrongly convicted based on one crooked cop's testimony.

The story is based on the nonfiction book "Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town" by Nate Blakeslee. Karen Croner wrote the screenplay.

The producers are: Mike Tollin, Brian Robbins and Sharla Sumpter for Tollin-Robbins Prods.; Berry and her manager, Vince Cirrincione; Jesse Beaton; Adam Rosenfelt and Sam Nazarian, both of Element Films, who will produce in conjunction with New Orleans-based LIFT Films.

Lionsgate has resurrected Tulia, the long-gestating Tollin-Robbins project starring Halle Berry as a lawyer investigating an infamous Texas drug bust. The producers are in negotiations with Carl Franklin to direct the feature.

The film centers on the 1999 arrests of 46 black men in the impoverished town of Tulia, Texas -- a sting effort where no money, drugs or illegal weapons were found on any of the suspects. Berry will portray the lead attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which intervened to free the citizens wrongly convicted based on one crooked cop's testimony.

The story is based on the nonfiction book "Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town" by Nate Blakeslee. Karen Croner wrote the screenplay.

The producers are: Mike Tollin, Brian Robbins and Sharla Sumpter for Tollin-Robbins Prods.; Berry and her manager, Vince Cirrincione; Jesse Beaton; Adam Rosenfelt and Sam Nazarian, both of Element Films, who will produce in conjunction with New Orleans-based LIFT Films.

Los Angeles-based Element Films and New Orleans-based LIFT Films are partnering to create a fund that will bring a series of film productions to Louisiana over the next three years. The companies have entered a production-financing agreement that will allow for the development and funding of a slate of films to be shot exclusively in the state. The deal calls for a minimum of eight films and as many as 15 and could bring to Louisiana more than $200 million worth of productions. The projects also will take advantage of Louisiana's aggressive film incentives. Element, run by CEO Sam Nazarian and president Adam Rosenfelt, has financed and produced several films in the state with LIFT, including Waiting, starring Ryan Reynolds, and is a partner in LA Squared, a Louisiana-based film fund that is a combination of private equity, public financing, bank debt and Louisiana state tax credits. LIFT Films is a partnership between LIFT Prods., Louisiana's largest film and television production studio, and Bart Prods., formed by Louisiana attorney and producer Morris Bart.

Consider the ellipsis in the title a warning. Between a couple of funny scenes and a bunch of unfunny gags, there's not much going on in "Waiting ... ". The comedy uses gross-out "humor" with little inventiveness to ply the familiar territory of twentysomething limbo and workplace hell. Despite a solid ensemble, this would-be "Kitchen Confidential" for the chain-steakhouse set, which boasts as many producers as cast members, doesn't serve up enough laughs to build a theatrical following but could find life on video as a takeout item.

There comes a moment for many thinking people when job security takes on life-threatening proportions: a clear-eyed look at unhappy co-workers and the inept boss signals something's gotta give. For 22-year-old Dean (Justin Long), that moment of truth occurs four years into his job waiting tables at ShenaniganZ. Obsessed with the apparent success of a former classmate -- helpfully brought to his attention by his mother -- Dean feels himself languishing at work and at the community college where he and best friend Monty (Ryan Reynolds) are on-again, off-again students.

Dangling benies and "power" before him, clueless manager Dan (David Koechner), who conducts dispiriting staff meetings by the Dumpster, offers the hard-working but directionless Dean a promotion to assistant manager. He is shocked when Dean asks for time to think it over. Where this is headed is as predictable as the dinner-hour rush.

The ShenaniganZ staff spend most nights partying together after long days slinging baked potatoes, and co-worker couplings are inevitable. Dean avoids commitment to earnest waitress Amy (Kaitlin Doubleday), while Dan and Monty eye the underage hostess (Vanessa Lengies). Monty, whose snarkiness is his identity (a cameo by Wendie Malick as his mother makes clear where he gets it), also spends time being humiliated by his feisty ex, waitress Serena (Anna Faris), and showing the ropes to wide-eyed new guy Mitch (John Francis Daley).

Mainly the ropes consist of learning how to play a behind-the-scenes time-waster that Serena rightly calls "an exercise in retarded homophobia." Sleazeball cook Raddimus (Luis Guzman), the mastermind of the Penis-Showing Game, provides demos for Mitch using raw chicken parts. Besides workplace dystopia, this exhibitionist stupidity is the script's central thread.

First-time writer-director Rob McKittrick demonstrates a feel for the systematic hysteria of restaurant dynamics, but his observations lack the absurdist edge of "Clerks" and the truly idiosyncratic detail that would make his characters three-dimensional. Within limited roles, the cast does what it can. Chi McBride, an actor capable of sublime understatement, plays the sage philosopher-king dishwasher, dispensing wisdom to a crew that includes two gangsta-wannabe pothead busboys (Andy Milonakis and Max Kasch), the angriest waitress in the world (Alanna Ubach) and a spineless virgin Robert Patrick Benedict). Is it any wonder that -- in the film's funniest gag -- their birthday serenade to a young boy makes him cry?

Filmed in New Orleans but with no sense of the place, "Waiting ..". unfolds mainly within appropriately generic restaurant interiors. Refreshingly, McKittrick doesn't lean on canned pop tracks as mortar, but neither does he craft enough of a story to hold together the shtick.

WAITING ...

Lions Gate Films

An Element Films and Eden Rock Media production in association with Wisenheimer Films

Credits:

Director-screenwriter: Rob McKittrick

Producers: Adam Rosenfelt, Stavros Merjos, Jay Rifkin, Jeff Balis, Rob Green

Executive producers: Chris Moore, Jon Shestack, Sam Nazarian, Malcolm Petal, Marc Schaberg, Thomas Augsberger, Paul Fiore

Director of photography: Matthew Irving

Production designer: Devorah Herbert

Music: Adam Gorgoni

Co-producers: Chris Fenton, Dean Shull, Randy Winograd

Costume designer: Jillian Kreiner

Editors: David Finfer, Andy Blumenthal

Cast:

Monty: Ryan Reynolds

Serena: Anna Faris

Dean: Justin Long

Dan: David Koechner

Mitch: John Francis Daley

Tyla: Emmanuelle Chriqui

Amy: Kaitlin Doubleday

Nick: Andy Milonakis

T-Dog: Max Kasch

Naomi: Alanna Ubach

Calvin: Robert Patrick Benedict

Natasha: Vanessa Lengies

Bishop: Chi McBride

Raddimus: Luis Guzman

Monty's Mom: Wendie Malick

MPAA rating: R

Running time -- 93 minutes...

Ellen Burstyn has signed on to the indie drama Down in the Valley for writer-director David Jacobson. Shooting is under way in Los Angeles with Element Films -- the combined company of Samy Boy Entertainment and HSI Entertainment -- fully financing. Set in the San Fernando Valley, the project revolves around a delusional man (Edward Norton) who believes that he's a cowboy and the relationship he starts with a rebellious young woman (Evan Rachel Wood). Burstyn will play the foster mother of Norton's character. Norton is producing Valley along with Holly Wiersma and Element's Adam Rosenfelt and Stavros Merjos. Element's Sam Nazarian is executive producing. Bill Migliore, Norton's producing partner at his Universal Pictures-based Class 5 Films, is serving in a producer capacity. Burstyn is repped by CAA and Benderspink's Courtney Kivowitz.

PARK CITY -- Hollywood's major talent agencies have hit Park City in full force with a volley of bashes to celebrate clients, films and corporate partners. First into the fray was ICM on Saturday night. The agency partnered with Samy Boy, Shelter and Exodus and returned to Village at the Lift -- host of ICM's bash last year -- for a packed party that turned out ICM's Shaun Redick, Nicole Clemens, Jeff Shumway, Carter Cohn, Renee Tab and Chris Hart along with Sam Nazarian, Adam Rosenfelt, the cast of Home of Phobia, Shannon Elizabeth, Joseph Reitman, Lance Bass and helmer Angela Robinson, who directed festival selection D.E.B.S.

Estella Warren and Ashley Scott have teamed to star in the horror film Trespassing for H.S.I. Entertainment/Samy Boy Pictures. James Merendino is directing the project from his own script. Trespassing, which is shooting in New Orleans, centers on a graduate student (Daniel Gillies) preparing his thesis on mythology who leads his friends on a research expedition to an old plantation estate on the outskirts of the Big Easy. The site is reputed to mysteriously cause madness and death to all who enter it. Warren and Scott play Gillies' friends who go along for the expedition. Clayne Crawford and Jeff Davis round out the cast. Producing Trespassing are H.S.I.'s Stavros Merjos and Adam Rosenfelt along with Pop Art Films' Sam Maydew. Samy Boy's Sam Nazarian will executive produce. Louisiana-based Lift Prods. is co-producing. Scott is repped by UTA, Original Management's Jonathan Perry and attorney Marcy Morris at Armstrong, Hirsch, Jackoway, Tyerman and Wertheimer. She appeared on Birds of Prey and next stars in Columbia Pictures' S.W.A.T. Warren is repped by UTA, Untitled Entertainment's Stephanie Simon and Morris. Her credits include Kangaroo Jack and Planet of the Apes. She next stars in Wayne Kramer's The Cooler for Lions Gate Films. Merendino's directing credits include SLC Punk! Gillies and Davis are repped by UTA.