Dorado Media has agreed to finance at least three upcoming films for Toronto-based animation house Arc Productions, beginning with the reunion of Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry in “The Canterville Ghost.”
The two Canadian companies have agreed that Dorado will help finance a slate of animated films, major projects budgeted between $30 and $50 million. 
“The Canterville Ghost,” an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s short story, will be the first film financed under the deal.
“As the first project through the Dorado-Arc pipeline, ‘The Canterville Ghost’ embodies all of the qualities we are looking for in an animated feature film and will yet again allow us to showcase our creative team who continue to perform brilliantly on worldwide brands such as Barbie, Halo and Thomas the Tank Engine,” Jeff Young, Arc’s President, said in a statement.
To be directed by Kim Burdon, it marks the first time in more than a decade Fry (below) and Laurie (above) have worked together (save a retrospective). The duo took the British comedy world by storm with the television sketch show, “A Bit of Fry & Laurie.”
Ennio Morricone will write the score for the film, which is the property of London-based Melmoth films. Melmoth producer Robert Chandler said Arc’s past films, including Shane Acker’s “9,” are what persuaded him to partner with them.
“The fact that they have the confidence to allocate equity funding from their slate deal with Dorado for our film is a compliment to both Melmoth and the project itself,” Chandler said in a statement. “We are hopeful that this will be the first of many successful collaborations for the Melmoth-Dorado-Arc team.”
The Dorado pact marks the second major deal for Arc in two months. It will also serve as the animation studio for Tayrona Films, which launched an animation division in mid-September.
