In early October, we attached Baek Yun-shik, one of Korea’s leading actors to co-star and are in final discussions with Yunjin Kim, co-star of ABC’s “Lost.” Mr. Keun Cho, one of Korea’s top production designers, who has won the equivalent of several Oscars® for his films, has also agreed to work on our film.
Ms. Irving is set to play “Hannah,” a Vermont writer who travels to Seoul to search for her adopted daughter’s birth mother. Hannah’s trip becomes complicated when she falls in love with the culture and a Korean painter.
In September, the Seoul Film Commission offered us an all-expenses paid trip to Seoul to complete our location scouting. The Commission has also approved at least $100,000 in production financing through its new Production Support Program.
We also attended the Pusan Film Festival and the Asian Film Market to meet with dozens of distributors and production companies. We are fielding several offers for Korean rights.
Our production team includes Steven Beer, counsel and executive producer of Strange Culture starring Tilda Swinton; Suzanne Schon, co-producer and Amy Lo, co-producer, who recently produced “Planet B-Boy” about break-dancers around the world.
I have 15 years experience as a producer. I began my career at CNBC and CNN and have produced several high-end cable documentaries for NBC and the Discovery Channel. In 2007, I produced a healthcare special on strokes for the NBC Station Group.
In 2004 and 2005, I supervised production of five Discovery Channel documentaries with budgets of $6 million. I managed a team of 50 writers, animators, cast, crew, special effects make-up artists and pyrotechnics experts. In 2005, I made the transition from television to film by serving as a line producer on Michael Mailer’s, “Kettle of Fish.” Kettle starred Matthew Modine and Gina Gershon. It premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.
Energized by that experience, I began looking for a script of my own. I moved to Vermont in 2005 and met Nora Jacobson, an award-winning filmmaker. Her most acclaimed film was “Delivered Vacant,” a documentary about the gentrification of Hoboken, New Jersey, which screened at Sundance and at the New York Film Festival. Her features include, “Nothing Like Dreaming” and “My Mother’s Early Lover’s.”
With our cast in place, we are in negotiations with several private equity investors as well a production companies in Korea and Hollywood. We are crafting an international distribution strategy and negotiating cable television and DVD deals. We are scheduled to shooting in Vermont in late March and April, 2008 and in Seoul during May.
I welcome your interest in this project and look forward to answering any questions you may have. I am happy to provide a copy of the script for review.
Sincerely yours,
Jane Applegate
