'Riverdance' team step into film

The prime movers from Abhann Productions - which produced the phenomenally successful Riverdance stage show - and Tyrone Productions…

The prime movers from Abhann Productions - which produced the phenomenally successful Riverdance stage show - and Tyrone Productions - the television company behind Open House, Ros na Rún and the Irish version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire - are moving into movies, writes Michael Dwyer.

Moya Doherty, John McColgan and Joan Egan are the executive producers of River Films, an Irish film production company unveiled at a reception in the Irish Pavillion at Cannes this week. "It's a very exciting new venture and we have a strong commitment to it," Joan Egan told The Irish Times in Cannes. "When we decided to make the move from television into theatre with Riverdance, people told us to stick to our knitting, but we were willing to take the risk, and if this venture works as well, we will be very happy."

The company has taken on Roy Heayberd, formerly a theatre director and head of drama at Ulster Television, as its creative director, and Suzanne McAuley, a former film and theatre production accountant, as its business and finance executive. At Cannes, River Films announced four feature film projects at various stages of development, and it hopes to go into production with at least one by next spring.

The films are Harm's Way, written by John Banville and dealing with two English girls who, with their governess, are evacuated to Ireland in wartime; Fractured, a thriller scripted by Robert Quinn, who directed the recent Dead Bodies; Coalminer, written by Tony Philpott, in which an Irish miner smuggles himself into Russia during the Stalin regime; and Warrior King, dealing with Brian Boru and based on Morgan Llewelyn's novel, The Lion of Irleand, which was the subject of several unsuccessful attempts to bring it to the screen in the past.

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Eastwood hangs around for the prizes

The scheduling of Clint Eastwood's new movie at Cannes is perfectly timed to keep him in town for tomorrow night's awards ceremony, and not just as a presenter. Speculation is rife that the veteran actor-director will collect a major prize tomorrow evening - most likely, best director - for the Warner Bros release, Mystic River, which had its world première at Cannes last night and stars Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Laurence Fishburne and Laura Linney. Not only would the festival be honouring a singular talent whose career spans more than 40 years, but it would also be repairing bridges burned when Warner Bros last had a film in competition - LA Confidential, which shamefully went unrewarded by the festival jury in 1996. Furthermore, Warner Bros is the only Hollywood studio with a film in competition at Cannes this year - even Miramax, a company unknown for passing up a publicity opportunity, has nothing in any category - and a major prize for Eastwood would help restore the faith of the studios in the festival.

'Dogville' may have it's day

The front-runner for the Palme d'Or tomorrow night is Lars von Trier's dire Dogville, starring Nicole Kidman (right) and Paul Bettany, which has divided audiences more sharply at Cannes than any entry since von Trier's risible Dancer in the Dark took the Palme three years ago. Chacun a son gout, as we say on the Croisette, but I confidently predict that no amount of awards will overcome the lethal word-of-mouth when Dogville opens. You can fool most of the critics at Cannes, and possibly the jury, but the public will vote with their feet when this mind-numbingly boring three-hour exercise in self-indulgence is inflicted upon them.

No rest for the wicked . . .

Sunday is as busy as any other day at Cannes, with screenings and ancillary events all over town from early morning until midnight. So, as duty called, I had to pass on Columbia TriStar's kind invitation to the Terminator 3/MTV party last Saturday night at the Bubble Palace aka Pierre Cardin's private villa in Antibes. The hospitality was lavish, by all accounts, and many of the guests were only getting back to Cannes at 8 a.m. on Sunday as I finished my breakfast and strolled down the Croisette for the first screening of Francois Ozon's clever and stylish new movie, Swimming Pool.

I did make it to Buena Vista's party for Calendar Girls, an engaging female spin on The Full Monty, which dramatises the experiences of middle-aged UK Womens' Institute members who posed naked for a calendar and raised over €800,000 for leukaemia charities. This was an altogether more sedate event than the T3 party, but most relaxing and enjoyable. Afternoon tea was served on the beach with cucumber sandwiches, sinful cakes, and for those who don't drink tea, champagne. In attendance were the stars of the film, Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, and the real-life women they play in it.

'Notting Hill' director to take on McEwan book

Roger Michell, the versatile director of Persuasion, Notting Hill and Changing Lanes, was in Cannes for the world premiere of The Mother, the Hanif Kureishi-scripted drama of a 65-year-old grandmother (Anne Reid) becoming sexually involved with her daughter's lover (Daniel Craig). Michell and Craig took time out at Cannes to plug their next movie together, Enduring Love, an adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel by playwright Joe Pennell in which a man's life unravels after the he becomes the target of an obsessive stalker.

'Brideshead' for the big screen

Warner Bros has finalised a deal to develop and produce a feature film treatment of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, which Granada Television made into a hugely popular TV series in the early 1980s, marking the major breakthrough for Jeremy Irons. The new adaptation is by veteran screenwriter Andrew Davies, who says he has "a darker, more heterosexual take" on the book, and it will concentrate on Charles Ryder's doomed love affair with Julia Flyte, rather than his relationship with Sebastian Flyte. "I am much less enamoured of all that Oxford snobbery than some people," says Davies. Scenes from another Waugh adaptation, Bright Young Things, directed by Stephen Fry, were shown to distributors in a promo reel at Cannes this week. That film opens in the autumn.

Idle tunes in with Merchant Ivory spoof

Former Monty Python member Eric Idle announced in Cannes that he is to direct a spoof on Merchant Ivory costume dramas, The Remains of the Piano, in August. Heading the cast is Geoffrey Rush as Hopkins, a middle-aged British aristocrat who returns from India with a fortune and a piano. According to the synopsis, his life is turned upside down when he meets two women - Helen (Neve Campbell) and Emma (a role yet to be cast), both of whom have enormous sexual hang-ups. The cast also includes Alfred Molina as Mussolini, Michael York as Lord Darling, Anjelica Huston as Countess Von Kunst, Billy Connolly as Inspector McGuffin, Will Kemp as Leonard Bastard, Tim Curry as Reverend Whoopsie and Patrick Stewart as Obie Ben Kingsley, along with Orlando Bloom, Julian Sands, Catherine O'Hara and Idle himself, with Robin Williams likely to appear in a cameo.

Michael Dwyer concludes his Cannes 2003 reports in The Irish Times on Wednesday.