May 19, 2015
By Scott Roxborough
Production shingles Vandal and Germany’s Summerstorm have teamed up with Middle East distributor Italia Film to set up a development fund for a slate of new features which Vandal and Summerstorm will produce and Italia will distribute in its territories.
The first project Italia will acquire under the new agreement will be The Feud, an action thriller starring Twilight’s Kellan Lutz, which Steven C. Miller is on board to direct. Lutz will play a man who returns to his Midwest hometown for his brother’s funeral only to find himself in a life-or-death battle with a local crime lord who traps him and his friends in an abandoned farming complex.
Highland Film Group is handling international sales in Cannes for The Feud.
Beirut-based Italia will take rights in the Middle East, Turkey, Greece and India for the project.
The first project to be developed under the Italia deal will be Command & Control, a conspiracy thriller from Skyscraper writers Byron Willinger and Phil de Blasi. Vandal and Summerstorm are currently shopping the project to directors. The spec script follows a NSA employee as he takes over the most secure room in America: U.S. Cyber Command — and commandeers its spyware tech to unravel a government conspiracy.
“The growing Middle Eastern market has shown a serious appetite for the sort of elevated action fare we aim to produce,” said Gabriela Bacher, CEO of Summerstorm parent company Film House Germany and Vandal Entertainment founder Navid McIlhargey in a joint statement.
The deal was brokered by Penny Karlin of The Karlin Connection.