In an exceptional deal for a director to make his feature helming debut, Ghost House Pictures has made a seven-figure deal with a Uruguayan commercials director to direct his pitch for an alien invasion film.

How did Fede Alvarez score such a million dollar deal when most first-time helmers make $250,000? The heat is based on “Ataque de Panico!” (Panic Attack), a four minute 48 second short film about an apocalyptic robot attack that Alvarez directed through his  commercial production house at a cost between $300-$500. Watch for yourself: http://vodpod.com/watch/2461813-ataque-de-pnico-panic-attack-2009

After the short found its way to the internet and Kanye West featured a link to the film on his blog, a 30-year old who was not on anyone’s radar outside the Uruguayan blurb market suddenly found the biggest agencies in Hollywood in a collective panic attack to sign him. That created a chain reaction of activity over two weeks that led to a trip to Hollywood, where he met with every major agency, management firm and law firm that responded to the short--and a big deal. 

After he signed with CAA, Anonymous Content and attorney Karl Austen, Alvarez made a pre-emptive deal with Ghost House that sets the helmer up to make his first film under the guidance of one of his directing heroes, Sam Raimi, who formed the genre label Ghost House within Mandate Pictures with Rob Tapert, Nathan Kahane and Joe Drake.

Raimi sparked to Alvarez’s short film—which offers a stylized vision of apocalyptic destruction that appears to have been made for far more than Alvarez spent. After Alvarez pitched an original idea for an alien invasion idea to the “Spider-Man 4” director, Ghost House  closed a deal with Alvarez’s new reps that guarantees him a six-figure holding deal to wait while Ghost House hires a high-end scribe to turn the idea into a feature. The six-figure deal will be applied against a seven-figure fee if Ghost House
makes the film.

Raimi will produce with Ghost House partner Tapert, with Vertigo’s Roy Lee and Doug Davison also be involved in producing capacities. Kahane will be exec producer.

The idea that an unknown could put himself on the map by placing his film on the internet shows how much the Hollywood landscape is changing and how hungry financiers and studios are to find a filmmaker who might deliver the next “Paranormal Activity,” “District 9” or “Twilight.” 

While the Thanksgiving weekend showed that stars can still perform—Sandra Bullock has carried the $30 million “The Blind Side” to a $100 million gross in just over one week—Alvarez’s short conjured up a high concept, visually-intriguing film that can be made for a small budget with no gross players by a filmmaker who can plug into a youthful demographic.

The Ghost House deal gives Alvarez the opportunity to make his Hollywood debut that is godfathered by Raimi in a mentoring role similar to the one that Peter Jackson served in Neill Blomkamp’s directing debut on “District 9,” an under $30 million film which has grossed over $180 million worldwide.

Paramount Pictures has landed U.S. distribution rights to “Area 51,” the Oren Peli-directed follow-up to the sleeper hit “Paranormal Activity.”

Deal puts the studio back in business with the creative and financing team behind “Paranormal Activity,” the $11,000 budget film which has grossed more than $106 million since Paramount began rolling it out in September.

Peli had a much larger budget to work with on this extraterrestrial tale than he did for his ghost story, as sources said he brought the film in at a shade under $5 million.

Paramount made a high-seven figure commitment, said sources to become co-financier with Incentive Filmed Entertainment and the Aramid Entertainment Fund. The trio will be co-financing partners going forward on any sequels.

As many as four other bidders wanted the picture, but Paramount Film Group president Adam Goodman had an inside track. He was instrumental in acquiring “Paranormal Activity” while at DreamWorks, and was the hands-on exec at Paramount, which did a superb job at slowly rolling out the film as the picture built word of mouth and became a breakout hit.

Goodman closed the deal with David Molner, chairman of Incentive Filmed Entertainment, Stuart Ford, CEO of IM Global, and CAA.

Just as they did on “Paranormal Activity,” Peli wrote and directed “Area 51” and Jason Blum is producing through his Blumhouse Productions banner. Room 101’s Steven Schneider, IM Global’s Ford and Amir Zbeda are executive producers.

Pic, which completed principal photography three weeks ago, was fully financed by Incentive and the Aramid Entertainment Fund. Latter is a co-financing partner of Paramount’s slate on films that include the “Transformers” films.

The film employs the “found footage” narrative structure that Peli used in “Paranormal Activity” to tell the story of three teens whose curiosity leads them to the notorious Area 51 portion of Nellis Air Force Base in the Nevada desert.

Fueled by the strong grosses of “Paranormal Activity,” “Area 51” was one of the brisk sellers at the American Film Market. It has sold internationally almost everywhere except Japan and certain Eastern European markets where talks are ongoing. Key buyers include Momentum in the U.K., Concorde in Germany, Equilatero/Warners in Spain, Village Roadshow in Australia, Alliance in Canada, Playarte in Brazil, Gussi in Latin America, RCV in Benelux and Svensk in Scandinavia.

Studio and financiers confirmed the deal and said they were pleased to be teaming once again on a film that hasn’t yet set a release date but will surely find its way to theaters some time in 2010.

“Moviegoers everywhere demanded to see Oren Peli’s spectacular debut and we are excited to show them what he’s created next,” said Par’s Goodman.

Peli and Blum said they were “Happy to continue working with with agile and talented production, marketing and distribution teams at Paramount that made `Paranormal Activity’ such a remarkable success.”

Molner said the deal illustrated the fertile ground in creating moderately budgeted franchises that have become some of Hollywood’s biggest hits.

“These films show that real franchises can be successfully launched from the independent side of the business, not something the marketplace necessarily believed five years ago,” he said. “As financiers, we’re very lucky to create value in ownership with major distributors like Paramount Pictures and the enviable talents of Jason, Oren, and IM Global.”

Said IM Global’s Ford: “With the international distribution already set up on the film, bringing Paramount onboard after they did such distinguished work on `Paranormal Activity’ is the perfect finale, and most important piece in the jigsaw.”

As Peli and Blum go into postproduction on “Area 51,” the next deal to be made will be for another installment of “Paranormal Activity,” which will once again be done through Paramount.

Awards season is upon us, and here’s the conundrum: There’s not much out there yet that’s screaming “Oscar!”

This was brought home to me last weekend when I attended the Academy Awards. Well, not the real awards but rather a new black-tie event dubbed the Governors Awards.

The Oscar folks were nervous about their new ceremony — they’re not big on innovation — but their show turned out to be a big hit. So much so that it raised an off-putting question: If the Governors Awards can be spirited and entertaining, why must Oscar night itself be such a stiff?

The Nov. 14 event consisted of a cocktail party and dinner for about 550 Academy members and assorted celebrities, with honorary awards handed out to Lauren Bacall, John Calley, Roger Corman and Gordon Willis. The atmosphere was a throwback to the pre-TV Oscar bacchanalia of decades ago when the Academy was more of a hard-drinking, back-slapping club that gathered for purposes of self-congratulation.

In recent years, however, as the Academy Awards have become a big-bucks TV special, a distinct chill has infiltrated every part of the process. The rules governing many of the awards are tortured, the show itself languid.

At last week’s Governors ceremony, by contrast, the mood was downright ebullient and the audience relaxed. Interestingly, however, no one was talking about possible contenders for the upcoming awards.

To be sure, the conversation of the evening didn’t lack for color. Bacall, upon being handed her statuette, blurted, “At last, a man in my life.” Kirk Douglas lamented he had once made a play for Bacall but lost out to Bogart. Ron Howard acknowledged that the biggest reward for making a successful film for Roger Corman (a producer famously cheap with his budgets) was that he’d never have to work for him again.

Cinematographer Willis recalled his quarrels with Woody Allen, who argued nervously that his jokes wouldn’t play against Willis’s dark backgrounds (Willis went even darker on “The Godfather”).

So here’s the irony: Left to their own devices, the Academy’s governors produced a show about movies and moviemakers who represented the opposite of the elitist fare honored at the Oscar show itself. Corman was the king of the B-pictures, Bacall was a pop icon, Calley ran two major studios and Willis shot hit movies.

So while the Academy voters obsess over arthouse movies year after year, the governors themselves seem to yearn for the time when Hollywood related more felicitously to pop culture.

Maybe that conflict is one explanation why there’s so little “heat” in the awards race thus far. There are 10 slots to fill for “best film,” not the customary five, yet the majors themselves are thus far spending about half as much on their campaigns as they did a year or two ago, as though they, too, are trying to figure out which way the wind is blowing.

Or has it become more like a faint breeze?

A number of producers complain these days that penny-pinching studios aren’t spending enough to promote their movies, but a new documentary has been released that spotlights a producer who had a genius for promotion -- and his stunts were definitely low-budget.

Bill Castle made B pictures, mostly horror movies, and he warned audiences that his movies were so scary that he’d cover them with an insurance policy in case any filmgoer died of fright.

He also hired “nurses” to stand in the lobby to increase the level of apprehension. Buzzers would go off under filmgoers’ seats to shock them. Paper mache ghosts would float over the audience mid-performance. Extras in luminous skeleton garb would be planted on the back of theater seats and women would be warned that, if they didn’t scream when tingled, they might die as a result.

The stunts were cheap to execute, and they produced remarkable results. Most of Bill Castle’s films were hits, even though they cost under $100,000 to produce.

Castle’s story is related in an excellent documentary produced and directed by Jeffrey Schwartz. It’s titled “Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story” with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment distributing.

Castle was as much a carnival barker as a filmmaker. His films had titles like "Macabre," “House on Haunted Hill” and “Strait Jacket.” Castle’s big dream, however, was to make, not another B thriller, but a major movie that would enhance his reputation. To that end he bought the rights to a hot novel called “Rosemary’s Baby,” which he planned to direct. Bob Evans and I bullied him into surrendering the directing job to Roman Polanski, then an up and coming European filmmaker.

Castle always regretted the step, but he still benefited richly from his producing credit. Alas, in an effort to sustain his new reputation as an A filmmaker, he shot an odd film called “Shanks,” starring Marcel Marceau, which died a quick death. Castle himself died shortly thereafter at age 63. Now and then when his thrillers are revived, complete with in-theater stunts, young audiences revel in them.

It’s as though the young filmgoers understand that, in an era of $100 million blockbusters, old fashioned low budget showmanship is still a craft to be respected.

This has been a bad year for that secretive fraternity known as business managers. Talent agents get a lot of attention in the press, but not the financial guys who invest the money. And several members of this fraternity have taken heat lately for having funneled money into Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, among others.

Now the business manager for one star, Nicolas Cage, has done the unthinkable - he’s criticized a star’s spending habits. According to the Associated Press, Samuel J. Levin has filed a suit against his former client in which he charged that Cage was so extravagant he bought castles in England and Bavaria, built up a huge collection of exotic cars and led a lifestyle that required $30 million a year in income to sustain.

Cage, it seems, had previously sued Levin claiming that no financial guru had led Cage “down a path toward financial ruin.” That’s why Levin counter-sued, insisting that the “ruin” scenario was Cage’s doing. Cage’s attorney says Levin has breached the star’s privacy by releasing details of Cage’s problems.

In what has to constitute the shortest retirement in Hollywood history, “New Moon” director Chris Weitz told BFD at a Gotham screening that he has no plans to hang it up at age 40. In fact, Weitz says he never intended to retire in the first place.

Thursday’s New York Post’s Page Six column cited a Moviemaker Magazine interview to report that Weitz was leaving the business after making one more film. He seemed to have rallied since doing that interview. Indeed, he had a vigor comparable to Minnesota Vikings QB Brett Favre, who has made temporary retirement as much a part of his playbook as the forward pass. 

Weitz said he will start production in March or April on “The Gardener,” but was contemplating a future beyond that. His prospects will surely brighten after the expected monstrous opening weekend for “New Moon.”  

Scripted by Argentinian writer/director Eric Eason, “The Gardener” reunites Weitz with “Twilight”-maker Summit Entertainment. Deals with Weitz and Eason are being negotiated.

“There are no werewolves or vampires, just a Mexican gardener in Los Angeles,” Weitz said at the cast screening held at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema.

Unlike his last book-based film “The Golden Compass,” Weitz said he was energized by the experience of making “New Moon” because Summit and “Twilight” series author Stephenie Meyer trusted him to honor the books that created a ferocious fan base, while adding his own stylistic imprint. He expected the same on “Golden Compass,” and was crushed when heavy-handed editing by New Line eliminated 30 minutes of footage and neutered any of the edge evident in the Phillip Pullman books

“It was an utter violation of my status as a director, and the worst thing that has happened to me professionally,” Weitz said.

The filmmaker said loyalty to the “Golden Compass” cast and crew kept him from speaking out when the film was released.

Said Weitz: “I practically bit through my tongue, but I would be very happy to see `New Moon’ surpass `The Golden Compass.’ Now, that dish is cold, and I’m ready to eat. I was treated badly, it was almost like they never read the books. They seemed frightened of offending the Right. This was a wonderful experience by comparison. I got to work with terrific young actors at the top of their game, and see Taylor Lautner perform so well.”

While Moviemaker quoted Weitz as focusing on surfing and learning Spanish and kung fu, those apparently will remain hobbies. Depth of Field, the company he runs with brother Paul, has a potential Oscar entry in the Tom Ford-directed “A Single Man,” and Paul is off directing “Little Fockers.”

Weitz said he’s learning to be careful about swearing off movies when he’s drained from finishing one, because it’s like a fully dilated pregnant woman swearing off reproduction.

Weitz and Favre aren’t the only ones who haven’t stuck to retirement proclamations.  In 2002, an Entertainment Weekly cover trumpeted the exclusive that Stephen King would soon stop writing books. Subsequently, he has killed more trees than a lumberjack, cranking out fat thrillers. And King had enough words left over to become a columnist for that magazine.

The awards season is getting off to a tepid start. There’s an absence of dark horse contenders. The majors have sharply cut spending on Oscar campaigns and the star presence has also been reduced.

Among the late entries to the race are “Crazy Heart” about a washed up country singer, and “Brothers,” a new film directed by Jim Sheridan. Jeff Bridges, a smart and congenial veteran of the interview circuit, will be a big plus for “Crazy Heart.” Tobey Maguire, who is famously interview-shy, may not be much of a help to “Brothers.”

All of which points up a behind-the-scenes debate about how stars should work the media circuit. One theory among top agents is that stars have been over-exposed to red carpet-type interview snippets that haven’t helped either their reputations or their pictures.

As an example, it’s no secret that bookers have been asking “Where’s George?” -- Clooney has two new pictures in the marketplace and also is the voice of the key character in “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Richard Corliss, Time Magazine’s critic, coincidentally observed this week that “Film stars are the industry’s supersalesman and no one closes a deal with more assurance or grace than George Clooney.”

Clooney worked the festivals for his idiosyncratic stoner film, “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” Though he’s shooting a film in Italy, there are rumors he may deliver an 11th hour boost to his other film, “Up In The Air,” in which he plays a flippant, surreal character who stays permanently airborne. “Air” has gotten good buzz, but still it’s a Christmas picture about a guy whose job it is to fire people -- not the ideal topic for a nation with 10% unemployment.

So will Clooney, Time’s “supersalesman,” hit the interview circuit? Will his brethren follow suit?

Stay tuned.

The first annual Governors' Awards dinner, which I attended on Sunday, was a great success. The Oscar folks don't usually like change, but they're committed to change things at this year's Oscar show in that some of the honorary awards, like the Thalberg, were presented at the dinner, not on TV. It was a good decision and there was a solid representation of star talent at the dinner -- Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Beatty, Hanks. Even Lauren Bacall got a special Oscar. (Her response upon being handed the gold statuette: "At last: A man in my life.")

But here's what was odd about the Academy ceremony: Hardly anyone was talking about potential Oscar contenders. Usually by this time of year some favorites start to emerge, but not this year. Katharine Bigelow attended the Academy event and folks clearly think very well of her movie, "The Hurt Locker." The producers of "Precious” were working the room, but other than that there seem to be slim pickings thus far this year. And there are 10 spots to fill.

  This Best Picture race is just beginning to take shape. The overnight emergence of the Jeff Bridges film Crazy Heart as a contender is an example. Suddenly it’s everywhere, in articles and blog ads. I haven’t seen it yet, so I can only wonder: Is it The Wrestler, or did Fox Searchlight saddle up this Paramount reject as an Oscar horse, needing a mount in this year’s race and hoping they can ride into the winner’s circle on a long-shot the way they did last year on Warner Bros.' castoff Slumdog Millionaire? Elsewhere, we’ll know momentarily how Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones will factor in the race, whether Rob Marshall’s Nine and Clint Eastwood’s Invictus will be factors. And we’ll know soon whether Avatar will be remembered for more than the $500 million pricetag placed on it by the New York Times.

How could it be that expensive? I’ve heard rumors (denied by Fox) that Cameron delivered a long cut for visual effects work, which swelled costs. If the DVD arrives with a lengthy director’s cut, we’ll know there was truth to that rumor. Avatar’s marketing budget is also big, but that is understandable. How many movies need 90-second spots to explain a plotline? Still, the game-changing element of 3-D won’t come across until we see the film. As an avowed Cameron fan, I hope I walk away feeling immersed in a world like never before, much like I walked away from Terminator 2 blown away by the liquid metal Terminator, and feeling the way I felt watching that hovering jet in True Lies, or seeing the Titanic sink. We’ll know shortly whether this Oscar race will be a runaway or whether distributors will see a chance to make some money by campaigning for some Oscar hardware. 

Given the sad state of newspapers, this is clearly not a great time to go into journalism, but is the movie business much better? The Hollywood studios seem to be caught up in a moment of turbulence. There have been changes at the top at both Disney and Universal, and now MGM looks like it may be broken up and its pieces auctioned off. But box office is running about 7% ahead of last year and the major conglomerates are announcing respectable earnings.

Ask any agent, studio exec or dealmaker and they’ll say the business is worse then they’ve ever seen it. It’s going to be hard for a while; deals are smaller and pictures implode easily. When I’m pitched a story about a film project that has unspecified funding, it’s difficult to know how real the project is, even with stars. Just this week, BFD revealed that Disney had dry-docked 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a fully developed picture that only recently seemed to be steaming full speed ahead with McG at the helm. He walked away to do something else. They hadn’t locked a star, but the big sea change was Disney installed a new topper in Rich Ross. Word around town was the new chief wasn’t as crazy about the project as was his predecessor, Dick Cook (though Disney denied that). Don’t be surprised to see more of this. MGM will remain a conundrum until it gets acquired by Fox, WB, Sony, Lionsgate or an outside financier. Mary Parent had put together all kinds of interesting pictures. Will they happen?

The biggest “downer” obviously is the steep decline in DVDs, but here’s the question: Are the congloms overreacting to this downturn? In generations past, the studios -- then single-product companies -- expected these ups and downs. Now that the studios are owned by congloms, maybe we’re seeing a case of over-reaction to temporary phenomena.

They might be using it as a way to reinforce frugality, but the DVD downturn is real and has completely changed negotiations. Your observation about temporary phenomena is astute. We’re in a transition phase and once things get sorted, some semblance of reality will return.  

 

The parents of the balloon boy were so avid for publicity that they may face jail time. Some 77-year-old guy named John Scott has been arrested in Los Angeles for scrawling “Who is John Scott?” on walls, graffiti-style, all over town because he’s so desperate for recognition. A neophyte actress-bimbette like Megan Fox is so eager to feed the blogs that she details her fling with a stripper named Nikita and compares her director to Hitler. There are more and more signs of an absurd hunger for celebrity. People crave recognition. They want to join the new cult of trash celebrities who manage somehow to cash in on their name recognition. They want to be paid to appear at mall openings and maybe even have their names on a brand of some kind. Yet we’re witnessing cases where the Lindsay Lohans of the world are being destroyed by their own faux celebrity. They get what they crave and then they can’t handle it.

 

Part of the problem is the saturation of the blog and twitter coverage, and reality TV. My youngest is a big fan of John and Kate Plus Eight, and has learned way more about divorce and philandering spouses than she needed to know. The young stars who crave validation from the press are playing a dangerous game. I thought Lynn Hirschberg’s recent New York Times Magazine profile on Megan Fox was an interesting study in a young woman who tried to get a handle on her sudden stardom by crafting a provocative caricature to hide behind. Fox admitted she invented that lesbian stripper fling story for a men’s magazine profile. That is a shortcut to being considered flaky because the public doesn’t like being lied to, nor do magazines. Fox isn’t the same as pseudo-celebs like Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton, whose celebrity isn’t a byproduct of talent, but who still turned themselves into brands. You are right about Lindsay Lohan becoming a cautionary tale. Once a promising talent who, I recall, had a quote around $8 million a picture after Mean Girls, Lohan now makes headlines when her creep of a father leaks tape of personal conversations to the media. There is a dynamic of dysfunction there that is shockingly sad, the true downside of celebrity culture.

He plays majestic screen figures like God ("Bruce Almighty") and Nelson Mandela (the upcoming Clint Eastwood-directed "Invictus"). Can Morgan Freeman's backing help launch a company trying to infiltrate the digital DVD download business? 

Freeman and Revelations Entertainment partner Lori McCreary have thrown their financial resources and technical expertise behind Digiboo LLC, a new venture that will allow consumers to rent films by plugging in a small, portable USB 3.0 flash drive into kiosks that will be set up at retail outlets beginning in January.

Run by CEO Richard Cohen--former MGM Home Entertainment and Consumer Products president--the L.A.-based Digiboo launches a pilot program in January with Oregon-based Movie Gallery Inc. that will see 100 digital movie kiosks operate in Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery retail stores, with plans to expand into airports, coffeehouses and college campuses.

While Revelations partners Freeman and McCreary are best known for feature film pursuits--she and Revelations are producers of “Invictus"--they have long experimented in hi-tech ventures.

Samuel Edge, the CEO of Digital Revelations, will become Digiboo’s Chief Technology Officer and will be involved day to day in the new venture. Revelations’ last tech venture was the digital movie-store ClickStar, a joint venture between chipmaker Intel and Relevations that launched at a time when consumers might not have been ready for digital downloading.

McCreary and Edge said things are changing. Downloads are speedy and easily played on home entertainment devices. Their involvement in the venture came from continuing dialogue with Intel.

“We were invited by Intel a year ago to help put together a technical strategy to distribute digitally, using USB as the medium,” Edge said. “USB 3.0 is remarkable for its portability, and the ability to walk to a kiosk, and walk away in eight to 15 seconds with a movie in your pocket.”

Digiboo joins Blockbuster on the battleground of this fledgling film rental technology, which eliminates DVDs in favor of downloads that can be played on computers, mobile phones, netbooks, televisions and other home devices.

While Blockbuster reportedly will launch its program using SD cards, Digiboo chose USB 3.0 technology, which the company says are already compatible to computers and can be adapted to other devices with an installed base device. An 8 GB unit holds up to four movies, with rental periods expiring at the end of 3-day windows, and copyright protected by digital rights management technology.

It is inevitable to compare any new video venture to Redbox and its $1.09 per day DVDs that have shaken up Hollywood. 

Digiboo won’t beat that price—Cohen said that price point will vary during the pilot program, but will likely be comparable to the $3.50 to $5.50 that Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery charges for rentals. But Digiboo kiosks will offer more than 1000 movies and TV shows for rental and sale, he said, and the download system eliminates the need for a trip to return a DVD.

“We don’t have any fantasy of knocking Redbox out of the box, because DVDs will remain a successful business for a good long time,” Cohen told Daily Variety. “The marketplace is very big, and there’s room for Redbox, Netflix, Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and us. Each serves a portion of a market that sometimes overlaps. For people who want a $1 a day rental, we’re not the better alternative, but we believe we offer sufficient benefits, including portability, to achieve a meaningful marketshare. Newer televisions are being built with USB ports, and we’re working with a manufacturer on a relatively inexpensive unit that will adapt other televisions. The netbooks that have become so popular won’t ever be able to play DVDs, but they are equipped to handle USB.”  

Aside from his MGM stint, Cohen was CEO of DVD kiosk company TNR Entertainment and also former exec veep in home video for Disney. He formed the company last year with Jeff Karbowiak, Blake Thomas and Eric Villette, who were also senior MGM Home Entertainment executives. Funding, he said, comes from a variety of investors in the U.S. and Europe, and he said that Revelations has become its most prominent investor, with McCreary joining the Digiboo board and Edge playing a key day to day role in the company.

He declined to say if Freeman will use his iconic industry status to help win studios over into supplying their titles to the new venture.

“They bring enormous credibility and intelligence to the company and validate the approach,” said Cohen, who said he’s in ongoing negotiations with studios to supply product, but was confident that the kiosks would be well represented with a wide selection.

“The Mentalist” star Simon Baker and producer Mark Johnson have teamed up to acquire feature rights to the Tim Winton novel “Breath.”

Baker and Johnson will produce together, and Baker plans to play one of the lead roles. They will set a director before setting up funding.

Published in 2008, the novel is set in a small town in Western Australia, where two 16-year old boys take up surfing under the tutelage of an enigmatic surfer named Sando (Baker) and his mysterious wife. Spurred on by their mentor, the boys test the limits of courage and recklessness both on the water and off as they try to escape their mundane lives.

Winton, one of Australia’s top authors, won the Miles Franklin Award for the book, the fourth time he’s won the honor. His 2001 novel “Dirt Music,” is being turned into a film by Phillip Noyce, and “Cloudstreet” is being turned into a miniseries by Screentime.

Johnson and Baker first teamed on the CBS legal drama “The Guardian.” Baker, who has been surfing the waters off Australia since childhood, was last seen on the big screen in “The Devil Wears Prada” and next stars in “The Killer Inside Me,” the Michael Winterbottom-directed adaptation of the Jim Thompson novel.

“Winton’s book beautifully captures the excitement and brutality of growing up in a way I’ve only experienced but have never been able to articulate,” Baker said.

Johnson is no stranger to Australia, as he has been camped there while producing the third installment of “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” the third installment of the Chronicles of Narnia series for Fox 2000 and Walden Media. He also wrapped the remake of “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” in Melbourne for Miramax, with Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes starring. Johnson produced the latter with Guillermo del Toro.

“While `Breath’ is at its heart a coming of age story, I see it primarily as a celebration of teenage anarchy and a youthful rejection of anything that smacks of the ordinary,” Johnson said. “It reminds me of a uniquely Australian version of `Y Tu Mama Tambien,’ one of my favorite films of the past dozen years.”

IPG and Jenny Darling & Associates repped Winton.