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franco nero

WWII Actioner, PEACE, Now Underway For Enderby

TWC/Columbia

Now filming is World War II action thriller, Peace, from Enderby Entertainment and director Robert Port. Legendary thesp Franco Nero has reportedly joined the film along with The Vampire Diaries series actor Chris Brochu following further exclusive news from Deadline earlier this month hailing actors Alexander Ludwig and Sam Keeley to star in the adaptation of Richard Bausch’s 2008 novel.

Via Penguin Random House:

Italy, near Cassino, in the terrible winter of 1944. An icy rain, continuing unabated for days. Guided by a seventy-year-old Italian man in rope-soled shoes, three American soldiers are sent on a reconnaissance mission up the side of a steep hill that they discover, before very long, to be a mountain. As they climb, the old man’s indeterminate loyalties only add to the terror and confusion that engulf them. Peace is a feat of storytelling from one of America’s most acclaimed novelists: a powerful look at the corrosiveness of violence, the human cost of war, and the redemptive power of mercy.

Port himself adapted the screenplay with Enderby’s own Rick Dugdale producing with Richard Bullock. Ludwig will serve as executive producer along with Maury Povich best known for hosting his popular eponymous talk show, Maury.

The film marks the latest of at least two projects which will feature Nero – the other being Django Lives which likely films next year. UTA Independent Film Group is handling worldwide rights for Peace which is underway in British Colombia in Canada.

DJANGO LIVES! With Actor Franco Nero Returning To Star

Lee B. Golden III

Myriad Pictures is reportedly reviving iconic spaghetti Western legend, Django, with Syrreal Entertainment, GMBH and Fast Draw Films, LLC. The new film was announced last week with word that Pandorum helmer Christian Alvart will direct the original screeplay being titled Django Lives!, written by Academy Award nominee John Sayles with Myriad also representing the film internationally for buyers at Cannes. The news comes roughly a year since Sayles was attached to the script with actor Franco Nero, who laid claim to the title role in Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 film, in mind for the role, and will officially reprise.

The film will see him remerging once again as the titular nomadic stranger living in 1914 California, a time far different from the dying Wild West, now the subject of Hollywood’s bustling period of Western narrative storytelling. En route to the small town of Matanzas, Django will find himself facing off a horde of KKK acolytes, unleashing his own brand of justice once again.

“I’m excited and honored to be a part of this great project that will update us on one of the greatest archetype characters of movie history”. said Alvart.

“Having Christian direct Sayles powerful screenplay is a dream come true. Even Christian’s third son is named Django. It was meant to be”, added Nero.

Corbucci’s Django is the root of its own legacy which spans cinema in a multitude of properties following its own inspiration from Kurosawa Akira’s Yojimbo. Nero is one of a plethora of actors to star in the dozens of sequels that followed the original, of which he only reprised in a second, Ted Archer’s Django Strikes Again in 1987. He last cameoed in a role seperate from that of the main protagonist in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained starring Jamie Foxx in 2012.

Alvart is producing for Syrreal along with Sigi Kamml, Josef Brandmaier, with Fast Draw Films’ Carolyn Pfeiffer, Louis Black, David Hollander and Nancy P. Sanders producing. Filming for Django Lives! will take place in Almeria, Spain and Berlin, Germany ahead of its 2018 release.