Posted: Mon., Oct. 11, 2010, 7:15am PT
Roxbury boards ‘Painless’
Thriller set for first quarter 2011 shoot
By JOHN HOPEWELL, EMILIO MAYORGA
SITGES, Spain — Miguel Angel Faura’s Roxbury Pictures has boarded Juan Carlos Medina’s « Insensibles » (Painless), one of the most-buzzed about psychological thrillers coming out of Catalonia.
With Roxbury on board and nearly all financing pieces now in place, « Painless » looks well on track for a first quarter 2011 shoot.
Paris-based Elle Driver, which has a strong line in Spanish-language titles, is selling international rights. It saw a spectacular flurry of early pre-sales when « Painless » was first brought on to the market in 2008.
Project’s originators, two go-ahead French companies — Antoine Simkine’s Les Films d’Antoine and Francois Cognard’s Tobina Film — will produce from France. Barcelona-based Roxbury lead produces, putting up 60% of pic’s Euros3.2 million ($4.5 million) budget. Portugal’s Fado Filmes has a 10% participation and the French co-producers the rest, Faura said at the Sitges Festival.
Simkine, Cognard and Faura exec produce.
A Contracorriente has Spanish theatrical distribution rights. Wild Bunch has home entertainment right in France, and Canal Plus and Cine Cinema share French pay TV rights. « Painless » has also pulled down Eurimages funding.
« Painless » is written by Medina and Spaniard Luis Berdejo. Apart from directing Kevin Costner in « The New Daughter, » Berdejo has proved a seminal influence on Barcelona-based genre production, co-writing « REC » with Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza. Spanish-born Medina grew up in the U.S. and was a vid clip helmer for the BBC.
Set in Catalonia, « Painless » weaves two stories: in one, starting during the Spanish Civil War and running through to the ’60s, an asylum attempts to rehabilitate children who feel no pain, by teaching them physical suffering.
In the second, unspooling in the present, a brilliant neurosurgeon who needs a bone marrow transplant, discovers this dark past when he searches for his biological parents.
French actor Tomas Lemarquis (« Noi Albino ») will play a survivor of these experiments. Other top roles are being cast.