Antonio Banderas' film company Green Moon, Ve´rtice 360 and Quinta Communications have inked a deal to co-produce and co-finance a slate of movies, including Spanish director Gabe Iba´n~ez's Automata.
Banderas will co-produce and star in Automata, which explores a futuristic vision of the world when civilization is taken over by artificial intelligence and humans have relationships with robots. The film is set to begin production later this year and was written by Javier Donate, Iba´n~ez and Igor Legarreta.
The three companies will begin production on Solo in 2012. Banderas will also star in the film, as well as serve as director and executive producer. Erik Jendresen of Band of Brothers has written and will co-executive produce the project. The movie centers on a Spanish special forces operative who has just returned home after a tour of duty in a war zone and his battle with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Banderas' Green Moon has an existing co-production partnership with Spain's Ve´rtice 360; this deal marks Tarak Ben Ammar’s Quinta Communications' entrance into the collaboration. Ben Ammar produced Femme Fatale in 2002, in which Banderas starred.
Banderas said of the deal: “This alliance is a great opportunity for European cinema. In times of crisis, this dream unites three film companies and their strengths in their ability to face a challenging new way of making movies. We are delighted to have Tarak Ben Ammar's prestigious Quinta Communications join us in this three-way co-production partnership with Ve´rtice 360. At Green Moon, the new long-term alliance is our most recent step in the company’s current growth strategy.”
Sau´l Ruiz, the CEO of Ve´rtice 360, added: "An agreement like this, with three leader companies like Green Moon, Ve´rtice 360 and Quinta, and starting with these two big projects gives an extra value to our strategy of promoting development of contents in all the Ve´rtice 360 industry value chain: services and equipment, production, post-production, distribution, broadcasting, exhibition and interactive."
Ben Ammar remarked: “I have been looking at opportunities in Spain for quite a while and the timing of this partnership with Ve´rtice and Green Moon could not be better. The partnership between the three companies means we now have a union between France, Italy and Spain, which is a formidable prospect for any independent media company. Plus, the opportunity to deepen my professional relationship with my good friend Antonio Banderas, who has himself built an impressive infrastructure in his native Spain, was an opportunity I could not say no to. I am also excited by the prospect of being a part of the discovery of a major new cinematic talent in Gabe Iba´n~ez.“