Director Paddy Breathnach started shooting Red Mist, a supernatural thriller, on location in Belfast this week. Scripted by Spencer Wright, it stars Arielle Kebell (from the US remakes of The Grudge 2and A Tale of Two Sisters) as a trainee doctor who administers an untested cocktail of drugs to a coma victim (Stephen Dillane), who wreaks revenge on the careless medics.
It's Breathnach's sixth feature, after Ailsa, I Went Down, Blow Dry, Man About Dogand Shrooms.
Red Mistis the first of four movies which Generator Entertainment will produce this year with investment from Northern Ireland Screen. The company is also making Terry Loane's South African adventure Vanilla Gorilla, starring Pierce Brosnan, and Peter Howitt's new version of David Copperfield, featuring Rowan Atkinson and Hayden Christensen, to be shot in Canada.
Hugh's film is out of this world
Hugh O'Conor has been acting since he was nine, but he stayed behind the camera this week to direct a short film, Spacemen Three, which he scripted with John Butler, who writes the Modern Moment column in this newspaper's Saturday Magazine. O'Conor assembled three fine fellow thespians to play the eponymous characters: Pat Shortt, Peter McDonald and Michael McElhatton. We are assured there was no tension on the set, even though O'Conor and Shortt are both nominated for Best Film Actor at Sunday's Ifta awards.
Award for Irish ecstasy film
Last weekend at the prestigious Clermont- Ferrand Short Film Festival in France, the Audience Award for Best International Short went to the Irish entry. The Wednesdays, directed by Conor Ferguson, features Doreen Keogh and Des Keogh as an elderly couple who reignite their love for each other with the help of some ecstasy tablets. The film is nominated for an Ifta and screens at the Dublin film festival next Tuesday.
In Los Angeles, El Tigrehas been voted Best Animated Television Production for Children at this year's Annie Awards for animation productions. Dublin-based Boulder Media created the animation for the series, shown on Nickelodeon.
New work for Shimmy Marcus
Shimmy Marcus, the Irish director of Headrush(2003), will direct Souled Out, about two teenagers caught up in the northern soul movement in 1974. "We're thinking Saturday Night Fevermeets This Is England," Marcus told Reel News. To be shot in Stoke- on-Trent, Souled Outwill star Martin Compston ( Sweet Sixteen, Red Road), Gerard Kearns ( Shameless) and Jennifer Ellison ( The Phantom of the Opera).
Marcus is also co-producer and supervising director on Breaking Boundaries: Ireland's Extraordinary Cricket World Cup, directed by Paul Davey. The documentary goes on DVD release from March 7th and will be shown on Setanta on March 16th.
Terminator back to the future
Australian actor Sam Worthington will star in Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. James Cameron, who directed the first two Terminators, recommended the actor, who stars in Cameron's new epic Avatar,to McG, who is directing Terminator Salvation. Christian Bale will play John Connor, who leads the surviving humans against the machines.
Do-gooders for the Wicker Man
British director Robin Hardy, who made his debut with the cult classic The Wicker Man(1973), will direct Cowboys for Christ, in which a virginal Texan couple (Paul Wesley and Susie Amy) set out to convert Scottish heathens.
Christopher Lee and Joan Collins also feature in the long-mooted project, which will only be Hardy's third film in 35 years. In 1986 he made a Dublin-set thriller, The Fantasist.
