Montreal: Christopher Eberts, a producer on the Universal Pictures thriller The Watcher, has launched Screenworks Media, a new Canadian entertainment production company, in partnership with Remstar Corp. principals and distributors Julien and Maxime Remillard and writer/director Malcolm Clarke.

‘The business plan for our company, 100% Canadian owned, is basically to create movies which work well in the international marketplace, America and abroad,’ says Eberts. ‘We’re perfectly positioned to qualify for subsidies both in Canada and through the [coproduction] treaty arrangements with Europe. In my opinion, these days if you’re going to be an independent film production company the only way to finance a movie is through coproduction.

‘The fact Remstar is a distribution company further facilitates deals because they’ll do the prebuy in Canada. We want to make large theatrical movies, we are not in the art house business.’

Eberts says Screenworks is closing on a joint-venture partnership with a large German company, giving it the capacity to fully finance movies budgeted between $12 million and $70 million. ‘Our goal is to make four pictures a year in that budget range,’ he says.

Eberts says the German equity market is probably seriously overheated, but the pending deal with the Germans is tax-driven.

Screenworks also plans to produce smaller movies, ‘edgier, more youth-oriented pictures budgeted under $10 million,’ including two in the pipeline, Too Cool and Go Go Tales, with Abel Ferrara slated to direct.

New production

Eberts (through his old company, Chris Eberts Productions) is in preproduction on Toronto-based director Dean Paras’ second feature, Christmas with jd, starring Devon Sawa. The film is a coming-of-age drama budgeted at us$4 million and will shoot in Montreal in December and January. Lions Gate Films has acquired Canadian distribution rights.

Screenworks is also prepping for a late January shoot in Vancouver on Liberty Stands Still, a dramatic thriller written and directed by Kari Skogland (Courage to Love) and starring Mira Sorvino. ‘It’s a go pending the casting of a male lead,’ says Eberts.

‘Kari is an interesting example and we’d like to find [other] Canadian writers and directors and help them create Hollywood movies,’ he says. ‘We’re open to joint-venture partnerships with other Canadian producers. That is part of our business plan.’

Screenworks has four major motion pictures in development, including Cannibals, with Clarke writing and slated to direct; In Harm’s Way, budgeted at $45 million; and Dancing with Giants, budgeted at $80 million.

International sales outfit Summit Entertainment of l.a. will handle the slate’s foreign sales.

‘We are a little concerned with the possibility of a strike [Screen Actors Guild], but it is our goal to make four movies in the year ahead,’ says Eberts.

u.k. transplant Clarke’s filmography includes the award-winning docs The Life and Death of Steven Biko (shot entirely in secret in South Africa) and Terror in the Promised Land. His first feature film was Voices From a Locked Room (1990), produced for Sony Classical Music and Avenue Pictures.

Scored on The Watcher

Born and raised in Montreal, Eberts relocated to the u.s. some 12 years ago. He is the nephew of veteran movie producer Jake Eberts (Dances with Wolves, Grey Owl) of u.k.-based Allied Filmmakers.

Chris Eberts produced the Slamdunk film festival winner Woman Wanted in Winnipeg in 1998. It was directed by Kiefer Sutherland, who starred alongside Holly Hunter and Michael Moriarty.

Eberts’ breakthrough as a producer has come with the Joe Charbanic psychological thriller The Watcher, starring Keanu Reeves, James Spader and Marisa Tomei. Eberts and partners raised us$30 million to produce the movie, selling domestic rights to Universal Pictures, reportedly the biggest deal completed at this year’s American Film Market.

The Watcher went to the top of the North American box office for two consecutive weeks, grossing more us$23 million in its first three weeks of release in September.

Screenworks Media has offices in Montreal, under construction in the Remstar building in Old Montreal, and in l.a. Remstar also has an office in Toronto. *