Los
Angeles, CA
Making its first move since the company’s launch earlier this
month, Bleiberg Entertainment, the Los Angeles-based production
and international sales company, announced today that legendary
writer/director Paul Schrader will direct the feature film “Adam
Resurrected.” The announcement was made by Bleiberg Entertainment
CEO, Ehud Bleiberg.
The film is based on a novel written by acclaimed novelist, Yoram
Kaniuk. The novel, which was lauded by major publications worldwide,
has been translated into 20 languages around the world.
“Adam Resurrected” is a standout effort written in a
stream of consciousness style focusing on the implications of the
Holocaust horrors on its survivors. The film tells the story of
Adam Stein, a former circus entertainer who was spared the gas chamber
so that he might entertain thousands of other Jews as they marched
to their deaths. He is now the ringleader at an asylum populated
solely by Holocaust survivors. Alternately more brilliant than the
doctors and more insane than any of the patients, Adam struggles
wildly to make sense of a world in which the line has been irreversibly
blurred between sanity and madness. With the biting irony of “Catch-22,”
the intellectual vigor of Saul Bellow, and the pathos and humanity
that are Kaniuk’s hallmarks, “Adam Resurrected”
offers a vision of a modern hell that devastates even as it inches
toward redemption.
Bleiberg is producing “Adam Resurrected” with Werner
Wirsing, Head of leading German distributor EMS/3LW (“Monster”,
“Old Boy,” “Machinist”). Ulf Israel (“Gate
to Heaven”) is executive producer. Noah Stollman wrote the
screenplay.
Commented Bleiberg, “I have long admired Paul’s work
and am thrilled that he has agreed to direct this film. It is incredibly
gratifying to marry the right material with the right director.
In this case, we have a complex script that is compassionate, tragic
and inspiring at the same time, and we are pleased that Paul will
bring his immense artistic abilities to our film.”
Schrader is an accomplished screenwriter and film director, praised
for his willingness to take stylistic and thematic risks and renowned
for writing such classics as “Taxi Driver,” “Raging
Bull,” “The Last Temptation of Christ” and directing
such notable films as “American Gigolo,” starring Richard
Gere, “Affliction,” starring Nick Nolte and “Mishima:
A Life in Four Chapters.”
Additional directing credits for Schrader include “Hardcore,”
“Touch,” “Light of Day,” “Cat People,”
“Light Sleeper,” “Auto Focus,” “Blue
Collar” and “Patty Hearst.” Schrader most recently
directed “Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist.”
Casting for “Adam Resurrected” will begin immediately
with Bleiberg eyeing a summer 2006 production date for the film,
which will be shot in Germany, Romania and Israel. Bleiberg Entertainment
is financing the film along with EMS/3LW, and handling worldwide
sales.
Ehud Bleiberg and attorney Robert Nau negotiated on behalf of Bleiberg
Entertainment. Schrader is represented by ICM and manager Johnnie
Planco of Parseghian Planco, LLC.
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