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40 films in four years -- with gradually increasing budgets and more and more recognizable actors and directors -- is the performance record of Los Angeles based Nu Image. The result is that "theatrical buyers are finally coming through the door," according to consultant Lisa Wilson-Deitell. The company has built a reputation of providing commercial pictures with high production values and will likely debut at Cannes its highest budgeted picture to date, the mafia action thriller Frankie the Fly, starring Dennis Hopper in the lead, with Keifer Sutherland, Darryl Hannah and Michael Madsen in supporting roles, in a film by Peter Markle that is sure to grab the attention of big dollar international buyers. The film is in post-production but Nu Image had 18 minutes available for buyers to view at the AFM.
Nu Image visibility is high at this AFM with multi-paged inserts and advertisements strategically placed in various market issues of every trade publication, including an eye-catching odd-sized, full-color, 12-page insert containing one-sheets of its 10 biggest films in the market. These include Warhead, a Mark Roper film shot in South Africa, The Forest Warrior, a family action/adventure film starring Chuck Norris, Judge & Jury with David Keith, Danger Zone with Billy Zane and Robert Downey, Jr. and Hollow Point, an actioner starring Thomas Ian Griffith, Tia Carrere, Donald Sutherland and John Lithgow. Early in the AFM, Trimark acquired North American rights to Hollow Point and one additional film from Nu Image not available for screening. Wilson-Deitell says that Trimark's move to take Nu Image products to U.S. theaters should soon be matched by other distributors as well. She adds that many clients return market after market because they are confident of the quality of the product and with the company's top rate delivery follow-up system.
President Danny Dimbort will happily tell you that the company has never announced a film that it hasn't made. On the last days of the AFM he sits in the front room of the Loew's suite showing clips to last-minute buyers and even screening trailers or reading one-sheets and hearing pitches of producers who have somehow eluded security and made it upstairs to the Nu Image suite. He holds an unlit cigar stub and shifts in a director's chair while viewing a five-minute trailer of a film called Forever Yours that actor/writer/director Dan Demorest has brought with him from New York and somehow gotten into Dimbort's hands. He is interrupted about a dozen times in order to take a call, sign a contract or answer a question, but his eyes keep moving back to the screen where an uncut diamond may be playing. When the trailer is through, Dimbort shrugs and says "I want to see the whole thing. Tell him to send me his movie." With that, he shifts his cigar from hand to mouth, returns to answering questions, signing contracts and opening another video box from another producer who has gotten their tape upstairs hoping to catch Dimbort in a good mood after brisk sales and a successful AFM.
Nu Image will have a new image in April when it moves into its own new corporate headquarters at 9145 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Before then, contact:
