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Zombie Western Bullets for the Dead is due to roll in Queensland in July, the first in a slate of low-budget genre films from a new joint venture between Cathy Overett.s Brisbane-based Cathartic Pictures and UK sales agent Stealth Media Group.

Overett told If the aim is to produce two or three films a year, each budgeted at $3 million, using the 40 per cent Australian producer tax offset, which Stealth will sell internationally. The $2 million Bullets for the Dead marks the feature debut of Australian writers-directors Joshua C. Birch and Michael Du-Shane, developed from a 3-minute film, 26 Bullets Dead, which they shot in 2011 when they were students at the Griffith Film School.

The plot revolves around a bounty hunter (Christopher Sommers) who escorts a fiery young woman (Kathryn Beck) and her gang of misfits to the sheriff. En route he discovers the remains of a massacre and rescues its sole survivor,...

‘Skyfall’ On Track To Beat ‘Quantum’s China Cume In 7 Days As of Thursday night, Skyfall’s 4-day cume in China was $17.9M, handily breaking the coveted 100M yuan mark. The film opened Monday and is playing on 8,079 screens in the country’s widest release ever. Sony says the 23rd James Bond film that has already broken the $1B mark internationally, is on track to outgross the last Bond film, Quantum Of Solace, in its first seven days in China. The movie’s release on Monday, at $5.1M, was almost three times that of Quantum. It came out amid reports of some tweaks by the local censors and calls by film industry insiders for reforms to the movie review system. Shi Chuan, a professor at Shanghai University’s school of film & TV arts and technology, proposed laws be put in place for censors to follow and said, “Movie regulators should respect the producers’ original ideas,...

NEW YORK -- Fresh off signing to lead the cast of the period drama Castle of Lies, James Caan has agreed to star in the indie feature Jericho Mansions opposite Jennifer Tilly and Maribel Verdu. After his Jericho role, Caan will segue to Castle, the highest-budgeted independent New Zealand-based film ever made (HR 10/1). Alberto Sciamma, whose medieval thriller Anazapta was recently acquired by Los Angeles-based international distribution company Lightning Entertainment, is directing Jericho. The film begins production in Canada this week. A psychological thriller set in an apartment building where a series of murders has occurred, Jericho is being produced by Kate Robbins under the Snow Falls Films banner. Caan portrays the reclusive building superintendent at the center of the murder investigation. Caan will be seen later this year in Matt Dillon's directorial debut, City of Ghosts, for United Artists, and in Lars von Trier's Dogville. Caan is repped by Endeavor.