Screen Daily
10 May 2001
New Line's German rights fall back in the Ring
Mike Goodridge in Cannes May 10, 2001
New Line Cinema, whose massive media event for The Lord Of The
Rings kicks off
today, is looking for a new partner in Germany. When the three
year output deal it struck
with Kinowelt Medien in Oct 1998 comes to an end in December,
New Line's worldwide
marketing and distribution chief Rolf Mittweg is not looking to
renew it, according to
sources. He will now negotiate with another German buyer kicking
off with next year's
slate and including the second and third films in The Lord of
The Rings trilogy.
Kinowelt will go ahead and release the first
movie in December along with the rest of
the world. Mittweg gave no comment, but Kinowelt said that they
are keen to negotiate a
new agreement with New Line.
Mittweg has worked in the past with Neue
Constantin, Concorde Film and Bodo Scriba
and Willi Baer's now defunct Connexion Films but he is now faced
with raising a
considerable sum for the two sequels from a territory which is
in a dramatic slump, after
three years of excessive spending.
Mittweg had sold the films as a trilogy
and raised a large percentage of the $300m
budget from international buyers such as Nippon Herald in Japan,
C+P in Benelux,
Metropolitan Filmexport in France, Taewon Entertainment in Korea
and Medusa in Italy.
Entertainment has the trilogy in the UK through its longterm output
deal.
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