Mushroom And Rialto Form Production Joint Venture
Mushroom Pictures and Rialto Entertainment have formed a joint venture to develop, finance, produce, distribute and
represent for international sales Australian and New Zealand genre features, it was announced today.
In making the announcement, Rialto's Kelly Rogers stated: "It is both Rialto & Mushroom Pictures intention to identify, produce and bring to the world market cutting-edge genre pictures with
potential cross-over world wide."
It is anticipated that the joint venture will identify, finance and produce at least two features within the next
eighteen months ¡V one from New Zealand and one from Australia.
Rialto Entertainment is fast becoming Australasia's leading independent distributor. In its first year of distribution
in Australia, Rialto grossed over $5 million in box office receipts with films such as AMERICAN SPLENDOR, THE CAT'S
MEOW, MRS CALDICOT'S CABBAGE WAR, REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES, and Christine Jeff's RAIN amongst others. The company's genre
label - Essential Films - distributed New Zealand's 5th largest film, SCARFIES, which took over $1.3 million at the NZ
box office
Mushroom Pictures is one of Australia's leading independent film producers having co-produced the international hit
CHOPPER starring Eric Bana and Jonathan Teplitzky's GETTIN' SQUARE starring David Wenhan. Mushroom Pictures is part of
the Mushroom group of companies whose chairman is Michael Gudinski.
Martyn Fabinyi, CEO of Mushroom Pictures says "It is exciting for Michael and myself to be working with Kelly, where we
can both control the production and distribution of these films"
Each party will be assessing the viability of potential projects with Arclight Films involved in international.
Source: Mirabella Productions