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Central Partnership was the first to announce a plan for films after the financing reform
The Central Partnership company was the first to publish a list of films that will be made with the participation of the state Film Support Fund. However, budget money is 240 million rubles. -- will amount to only 40% of the total amount planned to finance the production of seven films. The rest is funds raised by the company itself and its own. In addition, two of the seven films will be shot jointly with other participants in the pool appointed by the Cinema Fund - Sergei Selyanov's STV and Fyodor Bondarchuk's Art Pictures. In total, as you know, 2 billion rubles have been distributed from the state fund between the studios, another 800 million will be directed through other channels to various socially significant projects.Two films have a budget of 150 million rubles. This is “The Dark World”, a mystical action filmed in 3D format on the theme of ancient northern pagan legends, and “Shadowboxing 3” is a continuation of the successful TsPSh project. Alexey Sidorov, director of the famous “Brigade,” is related to both. He wrote both scripts and is going to direct as a director the next continuation of the story about the boxer Kolchin (the action this time takes place in Hong Kong), but “The Dark World” will be directed by Anton Megerdichev, who was the director of “Shadowboxing 2.” Apparently, “The Dark World” has already been filmed, and the fund’s money will be used to promote it at the box office.
Another relatively expensive film with a budget of 123 million rubles. will be directed by Oleg Pogodin, a former music video director, now a director and screenwriter (author of the film “Invincible”, which was not a success for the TsPSh, 2008, and for some reason the teenage thriller “Triumph”, 2000, which was banned for screening in Russia). He wrote the script back in 2006, and, according to him, it is something like a mixture of “Quiet Don” by Sholokhov and “The Godfather” by Puzo. The action takes place in the Don steppes today, a gang of killers is pursuing one of the members of a large Cossack family, a crime boss... The film is called “Home” and will be shot together with Sergei Selyanov’s studio.
Together with Fyodor Bondarchuk’s company, the chamber comedy “Two Days” will be shot - scripted and directed by Avdotya Smirnova, her film will cost only 50 million rubles. With this money they will show us a story about how one official, having fallen in love with a museum worker, changes his view of the world. The main roles are Bondarchuk himself and Ksenia Rappoport.
The cheapest of the films, the comedy melodrama “Heavenly Court,” is a project by director and screenwriter Alena Zvantsova, who specializes in melodramas with stars (“Wedding,” “Crazy Love”). Her story about the afterlife with Konstantin Khabensky, Mikhail Porechenkov, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Anna Mikhalkova will cost only 30 million rubles.
The romantic comedy “Five Brides” will take the viewer to the post-war era. The director of the film “Brownie,” Karen Oganesyan, based on a script by Yuri Korotkov, will make a film about how, in five days, a pilot who goes on vacation must find brides for his comrades who remained in Berlin.
And finally, the last project - also a romantic comedy and also about brides - “Exchange Wedding”, it will be directed by the author of the film “Bride at any Cost” Dmitry Grachev, and this entertainment film will tell about how supermodel Sonya and bank employee Sasha got married and what came of it. In one of the roles, apparently the TV presenter, to spite whom Sonya marries Sasha, Fyodor Bondarchuk again...
In general, the names of the performers are known, the genres are presented quite in the spirit of the current rental market: melodramas and thrillers. Would the TsPS plans have been different under the previous system of money distribution? Hardly. It is possible that there would be one less film for next year, but all of them, of course, could have been made with approximately the same cast. As for box office results, the past does not promise anything in this sense. Perhaps the future will be happier.
However, I would like to note that among the announced projects there is not a single arthouse film (unless you count Avdotya Smirnova’s film as such), and TsPSh has recently been one of the few companies that has embarked on bold experiments. Their time appears to be over.