December 19, 2000
The Hollywood Reporter
New cash fuels Cattleya
by Nick Vivarelli

ROME -- Publisher De Agostini and private equity fund San Paolo IMI have each taken a 10% stake in Italian film and TV production outfit Cattleya, bringing new cash to the Rome-based company that has long-term plans for a stock market flotation.

Founder Riccardo Tozzi said Cattleya intends to make eight to 10 movies next year with budgets totaling roughly 110 billion lira ($50 million) and three or four TV projects (miniseries or serials) at a cost of 25 billion lira ($12.5 million).

First on Cattleya's 2001 list is "Ripley's Game," an $18 million thriller starring John Malkovich and Dougray Scott ("Mission: Impossible 2"), directed by Liliana Cavani ("The Night Porter") and co-produced with Fine Line Features, which will hold international rights.

"Ripley's Game" is one of author Patricia Highsmith's four "Ripley" books and the same work on which German director Wim Wenders based his "The American Friend." Cavani's film, which starts shooting Jan. 15, will be partly set in a villa in Italy's northern Veneto region.

Next will be Franco Zeffirelli's "Callas Forever," a $17 million biopic about the final month in the life of the legendary opera singer Maria Callas.

Cattleya has in postproduction Serbian director Goran Paskaljevic's "How Harry Became a Tree," a $5.5 million English-language comedy set in Ireland during the 1920s. Starring Irish actors Adrian Dunbar ("Wild About Harry") and Cilian Murphy ("Mystery, Alaska"), it's about a matchmaker whose arrival with a group of young women in an Irish village sparks a conflict between tradition and modernity.

Cattleya will also be producing Paskaljevic's next, as yet untitled, project, Tozzi said.

After founding Cattleya in 1997, Tozzi, a former head of drama at top commercial broadcaster Mediaset, was joined by former colleagues Giovanni Stabilini and Marco Chimenz. Stabilini, who was in charge of acquisitions at Mediaset, manages Cattleya's business and financial side. Chimenz, who was the Los Angeles representative for Medusa, the film unit of Mediaset parent company Fininvest, is handling Cattleya's international co-productions, acquisitions and sales.

Tozzi said the time is right for a business-minded yet quality-conscious production powerhouse in Italy. "If there is a non-English cinema that can claim some success these days, it is Italian cinema," he said at a news conference last week. "Today's Italian auteurs have a different attitude. They have become more pragmatic without giving up their elegance. This new type of approach is what we are here to represent."

© 2000 The Hollywood Reporter