Millennium Films has signed a $100 million, three-year co-financing and co-production agreement with West Coast Film Partners, which will kick off with Antoine Fuqua's "White House Taken," an action film about the U.S. Secret Service.
The deal, which was put together by Millennium president Mark Gill and West Coast CEO Klay Shroedel, was announced on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival.
The agreement calls for the companies to co-finance two or three features each year for the next three years. The first of those films, "White House Taken," will star Gerard Butler as a disgraced Secret Service agent who has a chance to redeem himself when North Koreans take over the White House.
Previous films from director Fuqua include "Training Day," "King Arthur" and "Brooklyn's Finest."
The deal was negotiated by Gill, Millennium chairman Avi Lerner, Trevor Short and Lonie Ramati for Millennium, whose upcoming slate also includes the Cannes competition entry "The Paperboy." Negotiators for West Coast Film Partners, an international equity fund and production company, were Shroedel, West Coast president Stefan Gray and Gary Concoff of Troy Gould.
In the press release announcing the deal, Lerner said of the West Coast team, "The movies they want to make are very much in line with the direction we're taking our company today."
Added Shroedel, “At a time when so many companies in the film business are retrenching, these guys [Millennium] are expanding. We share their optimism about the potential for growth and success in the motion picture business, if properly managed, in the years ahead.”
