Screen Talk: New regency age

What banking crisis? After the bailouts come the handouts. Heavyweight Hollywood production label New Regency, which brought audiences titles such as Knight and Day, has shored up its financial reserves with a deal to replace its $500m credit line through a group of banks. The lead banks on the five-year revolving credit line are J P Morgan and Bank of America, with at least another dozen banks involved in the syndication of the loan. New Regency is one of Hollywood's solid movie-makers and has a strong credit rating and a healthy library of movies to exploit, which is why the credit line deal is in place. It is still 20 per cent owned by News Corp and renewed its movie distribution deal with 20th Century Fox until 2022. Upcoming New Regency titles include What's Your Number, a comedy starring Anna Faris (above middle), sci-fi thriller In Time, starring Olivia Wilde and Justin Timberlake, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.

Managing expectations

Welsh-born actor Luke Evans is on the march in Hollywood. His move to appoint a management company to help him on his merry way is a sure sign of a burgeoning career. Evans (above left) has signed on with Management 360. His résumé boasts several roles demanding sandals – he's appeared in Clash of the Titans, Robin Hood and the upcoming Immortals. He's also about to be seen in The Three Musketeers, directed by Paul W S Anderson, as Aramis, and is currently shooting The Hobbit.

Think small

Charles "Chuck" Roven and his Atlas Entertainment, producers of big-budget extravaganzas such as The Dark Knight, Get Smart and the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel, did something eccentric in Hollywood terms. He launched Atlas Independent, an affiliated company that will produce indie-minded movies with budgets of $10m or less. Run by music video producer-turned-indie movie guru William Green, Atlas Independent is betting on the potential high-profit margins of smaller films. Less is more is not something that Hollywood hears every day. The company hopes to have as much control as possible on the projects, so it will look for independent financing and find distribution after production. Roven is already in motion on his first "small" production, having wrapped the dramatic dark comedy Revenge for Jolly, written by Brian Petsos, directed by Chadd Harbold and starring Petsos, Kristen Wiig, Elijah Wood, Adam Brody and Ryan Phillippe.

Sharing is caring

Mighty studio names are lining up behind Robopocalypse, Steven Spielberg's sci-fi epic that aims to smash its way into cinemas around the world in July 2013. Fox is coming aboard to co-finance and partner on the DreamWorks project with Disney pushing it into movie houses in the US. Fox will bring it to international audiences. Robopocalypse, based on the book of the same name by Daniel H Wilson, reunites Fox and Spielberg, who worked together on Minority Report. DreamWorks acquired the rights to Wilson's then-unpublished manuscript – about the fate of the human race following a robot uprising – in November 2009. The novel hit US shops in June and quickly won a spot on The New York Times bestseller list.

US and France join forces for war effort

US production house Shoreline Entertainment is backing the English-language comedy/drama So I Say, aka IPU: Convicted to Live, with Gérard Depardieu. The Second World War-set feature is based on the Romanian novella The Death of Ipu by Titus Popvici and also stars Harvey Keitel. There is no news on whether or not Depardieu (top right) will fly by private jet to the shoot in Romania.