Foreign productions in Hungary
Producer László Sipos attracted two new foreign productions to Hungary: Living Neon Dreams, a modern version of Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Amsterdamned a crime story taking place in the Dutch capital.
After a long pre-production period the cast and crew of Living Neon Dreams will start shooting in July-August, László Sipos told film.hu. The British-Irish-South-African co-production was inspired by the Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland, however the story is given a modern tone. Alice lives the ordinary life of schoolgirl in Malibu: she has fights with her family, she is an ardent fan of parties and she is in love. After breaking up with her boyfriend at a party, she gets really drunk and decides to leave by car. She enters the world of imagination when on the way from the party she crashes into the seaside rocks and falls into a coma. The stake of the conflict with the Dame of Hearts this time is no less than her waking up from the coma. Alice can wake up in the real world, only if she manages to get out of Wonderland.
The new Alice-fantasy will be directed by the producer’s son Jeremy Tarr, and – though László Sipos has not confirmed it yet – the bizarre looking Marilyn Manson is going to play the role of the Dame of Hearts. Wonderland will probably be created in Hungary and in Britain. Hungary will provide „real” as well as virtual locations for the production, since the movie is planned to be full of digital effects, and the scenes shot in front of a green screen will be conducted by a team of hungarian special effect experts under both hungarian and foreign supervision.
After they finish shooting at the end of the year or early next year, another Tarr-Sipos film is expected to be shot in Hungary. László Sipos has revealed very little about the details of the crime story Amsterdamned, however he told us that several hungarian directors are competing for it.
According to László Sipos Hungary might attract foreign productions for several reasons, but he identified the tax refund guaranteed by the Film Law as the most important factor besides the reasonable costs, the attractive locations, the traditions of the film industry and the experienced crews. It is this aspect of the new Film Law, due to which 20 percent of production costs spent in Hungary are refundable by the hungarian state. László Sipos thinks that the professional experts, the locations and the relatively reasonable production costs had attracted many foreign productions to Hungary before, but since they passed the new film law in 2004, due to the guarantees and possibilities it provides, the number of foreign productions has considerably increased. László Sipos’s company, Hungarian Film Connection, has attracted three other productions to Hungary since the new film law was passed. The latest of which was a cold-war story, Joy Division directed by Reg Traviss which was a British-German-Hungarian co-production.
László Sipos told film.hu that the Hungarian crew working in foreign productions has to meet the same requirements as the British or German crew. And as for him, the co-producer, he puts a great emphasis on both artistic and commercial aspects when working on foreign productions in Hungary, since this is the only way Hungary can become an internationally acclaimed Wonderland for movies.