Million Dollar Heroes
Miramax’s genre offshoot Dimension has signed a world wide, first look production deal with the comic-book publishing and film company Platinum Studios. Under the agreement, Dimension gains access to more than 1000 library titles which they plan to turn into live-action movies.

Platinum will co-develop and co-produce pictures which Dimension will then dub or subtitle for international distribution. We could soon see Spain’s Trace of Chalk, Belgium’s Jeremiah, Germany’s Agent 327 and Italy’s Nathan Never on the screen. The interesting part of the deal is that it could mean a Dellamorte Dellamore American remake is on the cards.

Platinum founder Ervin Rustemagic’s partner in Los Angeles is Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, the man behind Men in Black, and his latest deal is with New Line Cinema for a feature version of Million Dollar Heroes. That property is about two comic book artists who become bitter rivals and adopt the personas of their comic book heroes to fight each other for a bet.

Murder Most Fowler
The work of novelist Chris Fowler is finally going to come to the screen thanks to an eXistenZ-style co-production deal between Canada’s Alliance Atlantis and Britain’s Natural Nylon. Disturbia will be the first film to be made under the new deal directed by Jake (Plunkett & Macleane) Scott. The chiller is the story of a commoner writing an article about the upper classes who discovers the existence of a sinister secret society.

Psychoville will be the second Fowler title to get the $15 million budget treatment and will be directed by Sara Sugarman who recently completed the comedy Mad Cows. Regular readers of this column will know how Fowler’s novel Spanky nearly got made by Mimic director Guillermo del Toro, so this is very good news for the talented writer and film advertising agency owner indeed. Both productions will draw on the Natural Nylon talent pool of Jude Law, Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Sean Pertwee and Sadie Frost (who are all directors of the company).

Orange Unscrewed
Warner Bros will re-release Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange in the UK next spring, 26 years after the film was banned from cinema and video release in Britain. A national cinema release for the film is expected after the late director’s last film Eyes Wide Shut, has completed the circuit. Kubrick himself pulled his film in the UK after claims that the rapes and violence depicted in it were prompting copycat attacks. It has been unobtainable in Britain since 1973, when Kubrick ordered Warner Bros to remove it from cinemas after a 61-week run. It remains forbidden under copyright law to import copies on video in the United Kingdom, although the film is available in Europe and North America.