CP Productions and Mississippi-based Ghostrider Ent. will co-finance a slate of 10 horror films over the next three years, per VARIETY.
CP Prods. Principals Michael Cerenzie and Christine Peters have started a genre division for the films, which are expected to be budgeted at between $8 and $20 million.
Eric Thompson, who most recently ran Maverick Films' genre label Maverick Reds, will head the new division. He came to CP when he signed his Doomsday Twins Productions label to a first-look deal with CP.
Thompson still had most of the genre projects he had developed at Maverick Red, and approached Ghostrider Ent., headed by Wes Benton.
Two of the new films are RITES OF SPRING, written and directed by Padraig Reynolds (a father avenging his son's murder crosses paths with a serial killer targeting teens) and SLAUGHTER, written by Nathan Brookes and Bobby Lee Darby and directed by Victor Garcia.
The majority of the films will be shot in Mississippi and surrounding areas, allowing the productions to take advantage of tax credits and spur the area's economy. About two to three films will be made a year.
"What is exciting about the fund is it will create more content and mitigate financial risk, while revitalizing the Mississippi area and help get people back to work," Cerenzie told VARIETY.
Paramount will get first dibs on pictures that require a larger budget. Cerenzie most recently produced BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD and just wrapped BLACK WATER TRANSIT. He is prepping CHAOS, starring Harvey Keitel with Daphna Kastner on to write and direct. Cerenzie, Peters and Keitel are producing with Martin Scorsese executive producing.
Ghostrider's parent company, Red Planet Ent., is in talks to buy 84 acres of land in Mississippi near the University of Southern Mississippi Film School campus so they can build production facilities.
