Emerging Italian production players Wildside and Indiana have joined forces to form Inside, a new outfit dedicated to luring foreign productions to Italy where a flurry of international shoots is starting to flock, including MGM’s “Ben Hur” and upcoming James Bond pic “Spectre.”
The new company, a first for Italy, is being conceived as a “one-stop-shop” to provide executive production services and also location scouting, casting, accounting, legal, fund-raising assistance and access to other Italian and European soft money resources, said Indiana’s Benedetto Habib.
Wildside is the producer of films such as Adam Driver-starrer “Hungry Hearts,” and Sky’s high-profile TV skein “1992,” which bows Feb. 9 in Berlin. Indiana is the shingle behind Paolo Virzi’s “Human Capital,” which screened at Tribeca last year, among other titles.
Wild side’s Mario Gianani underscored that the two companies “have broad shoulders” which “can help maximise obtainable resources and use [Italian] incentives better” than some of the single executive producers with whom some foreign productions are currently working in Italy.
“We want to usher in the transition from an artisanal system to an industrial one,” Gianani added.
Italo tax incentives now offer a generous 25% deduction for international productions capped at €10 million ($11.4 million) not exceeding 60% of the total budget, payable through an Italian executive producer.
The Italo incentives, which are simply and effectively structured, have been key to luring foreign productions back to Italy. Timur Bekmambetov-directed “Ben Hur,” from MGM and Paramount, currently shooting in Matera, marks the first big-budget Hollywood pic entirely shot in Italy since Miramax’s “Gangs of New York” in 2002.
However, the Inside execs underscored that they are happy to work with smaller-scale pics
“Our idea is to face challenges where we want to understand how we can help foreign partners make the film with the money they have available; it’s a broader concept, compared with a classic service,” pointed out Indiana’s Marco Cohen.
Gianani added that in certain cases they could also decide to invest in certain projects themselves.
Inside will have outposts in Rome, Milan and Los Angeles, where their rep is executive producer Dov Mamann.
Upcoming international productions that Inside will executive produce include “Stratton: First Into Action,” starring Henry Cavill (“The Man From U.N.C.L.E,”) produced by Amber Entertainment and Promethean Prods., and “War Wolf,” based on an original idea by writer Paul Finch, also produced by Amber Entertainment.
