Film incentives put Fiji on 'Edge'
Fund goes 'Straight'
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The $14 million project has been financed by Fijian investors, co-produced by Canadian shingles CD Films Prods. and Edgey Prods. with Craig Baumgarten ("Shattered Glass") and Robert Geringer exec producing.
Christian Duguay ("The Art of War") is directing a script from John Cox and Agatha Dominik. Sidney Kimmel Entertainment will handle international distribution; a domestic distribution deal hasn't been inked.
Story's about a group of troubled teens sent to a rehabilitation program housed in a remote camp on the island of Fiji. What their parents believe is a state-of-the-art deluxe institution in a beautiful natural environment turns out to be a prison-like boot camp where they are abused and brainwashed.
Features such as "Cast Away," "The Blue Lagoon" and "Anacondas 2" have been shot in Fiji, but "Straight Edge" is the first to use the nation's 5-year-old incentive program, designed to provide jobs and start a film production infrastructure. "The problem they're addressing is that most educated Fijian teenagers go overseas for their education and have little incentive to return," Geringer said.
Geringer has been working on bringing a project to the South Pacific nation since he met a member of the film commission at Cannes in 2003. He's made two dozen trips to Fiji since and brought in Baumgarten, who worked as an exec at Par, Col, Lorimar and Fox.
Geringer and Baumgarten assert that the multitude of Fijian landscapes plus incentives can lead to a Fijian film industry. They plan to arrange financing for several more projects, with the second to shoot as early as the spring.
