Foreign directors taking on Hollywood

By Steven Zeitchik

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - The trailer for Universal's upcoming movie "Wanted" features many of the hallmarks of a studio summer movie: Quick cuts, effects-heavy action, Angelina Jolie on the hood of a vintage red Viper.

Then the credits flash, and the director is shown to be Timur Bekmambetov, a Russian-language filmmaker who hasn't exactly achieved household-name status with previous efforts like "Night Watch: Nochnoi Dozor."

Bekmambetov is hardly the first overseas director to try to make his mark in the U.S. From Anatole Litvak to Paul Verhoeven to Roland Emmerich, directors have been trickling into Hollywood from non-English-speaking countries for about as long as Hollywood has existed.

But it usually takes the helmers years to get a shot at a big movie. Bekmambetov represents the growing confidence studios have in imported directors, more of whom are entering bigger projects right off the bat and forgoing the training wheels of low-budget studio productions for $50 million-$100 million mountain racers.

"Foreign directors have always been in Hollywood," says Rich Klubeck, a partner at the United Talent Agency. "I think what really changed is that they're now in studio tentpoles."

INTERNATIONAL MANHUNT

The list of directors now making the jump from local fare to U.S. wide releases with surprising speed is wide and varied.

French director Jean-Marc Vallee had barely registered among American moviegoers with foreign-language fare like "C.R.A.Z.Y.," which wasn't even released theatrically in the U.S. But that didn't stop producer Graham King and Martin Scorsese from signing him to direct "The Young Victoria," their high-profile project about period England written by "Gosford Park" scribe Julian Fellowes and starring Emily Blunt.

United Artists created a stir at Sundance when it confirmed that Nacho Vigalondo, the Spanish director behind the foreign-language indie film "Timecrimes," will write and direct an English-language adaptation. A-list scribe Steve Zaillian will produce.

After directing several Icelandic hits, that country's Baltasar Kormakur is now set to direct the drama "Run for Her Life," which a number of big producers are said to be circling. German Christian Alvart, know for the obscure film "Curiosity & the Cat," has been attached by Paramount to "Case 39," a thriller starring Renee Zellweger. Brazilian Fernando Meirelles gets his first English-language shot with Miramax's big 2008 bet "Blindness." French director Xavier Gens made November's "Hitman" for Fox. And Denmark's Susanne Bier might have landed with a thud at the box office with "Things We Lost in the Fire," but she's still in high demand at art house labels.

Of course there's also the Three Amigos deal from last year's Cannes Film Festival, in which Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu landed a five-film pact with Universal. Indeed, when the new directors get their chance, it often is with the overall deal typical of A-list U.S. directors. Bekmambetov has a Universal pact that, in addition to "Wanted," includes the comic book adaptation "The Red Star," a CG-live hybrid "9," and a financing pact for Russian-language movies.

The reason for the acceleration isn't just that the talent level is deepening along with the rise of domestic film cultures (and money). It's that Americans also are better at finding them. William Morris agents read trade reviews of obscure foreign movies, which is how they discovered Bekmambetov.

Agents like International Creative Management's Nathan Ross, who represents Vigalondo and Vallee, scour festivals around the world the way a baseball scout combs Dominican Republic ball fields.

"In the '60s it was the French New Wave. In the '70s it was the next generation of great American directors," Ross says. "This decade is about the new generation of foreign directors."

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