The company, controlled and chaired jointly by HanWay owner Jeremy Thomas and Celluloid topper Hengameh Panahi, has a library of 500 titles and offices in London, Paris and Toronto.

HanWay's Tim Haslam will act as CEO, based in London, with particular responsibility for sales, distribution and marketing. Panahi, based in Paris, will oversee acquisitions and production.

Celluloid's existing Toronto team under Charlotte Mickie will be rolled into the venture, with a specific focus on co-productions, acquisitions and sales for independent North American films.

Thomas will continue to produce independently through his long-established Recorded Picture Co., but his movies will be handled by Dreamachine.

"Over the last few years, HanWay has dramatically expanded upon this aim, and I see Dreamachine as the marriage of two rapidly evolving companies with the same ambition: the distribution of quality cinema," Thomas said.

Thomas and Panahi hope the combined strength of the Dreamachine library and management teams will enable them to leverage more financing for bigger movies, to attract filmmakers, to retain more rights and to give more support to distributors.

Dreamachine also plans to launch its own global digital distribution platform for video-on-demand via the Internet.

However, the total number of movies handled by Dreamachine will be significantly fewer than the combined existing output of HanWay and Celluloid. The aim is to focus increased resources more selectively on bigger movies, for which there is real demand in the marketplace.

Celluloid Dreams is handling the upcoming actioner "Triangle", directed by Ringo Lam, Johnnie To and Tsui Hark, as well as Japanese drama "Sad Vacation" and "The Mourning Forest."

© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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