Berlin 2012: Momentum Pictures Stitches Up U.K. Rights to Richard Raaphorst's 'Frankenstein's Army'

BERLIN — Momentum Pictures, Alliance Films' U.K. distribution division, has signed up to take writer-director Richard Raaphorst's horror film Frankenstein's Army on a British tour of duty.

The movie, now shooting in Europe, is a co-production of MPI/Dark Sky Films, Los Angeles-based XYZ Films and Pellicola of Amsterdam.

The Momentum acquisition of U.K. rights to Raaphorst's big-screen debut was announced at the EFM in Berlin.

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The presale was negotiated by Nate Bolotin of XYZ Films and Robert Walak of Momentum, the subsidiary of Montreal-based Alliance. MPI and XYZ are handling international sales.

Shooting in Prague, the movie marks Dutch director Raaphorst's debut after his Worst Case Scenario shorts gained him popularity among horror fans worldwide.

His story is set toward the end of World War II and sees Russian soldiers, pushing into eastern Germany, stumble across a secret Nazi lab, one that has unearthed and begun experimenting with the journal of one Dr. Viktor Frankenstein.

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The scientists have used the notorious Frankenstein’s work to assemble an army of supersoldiers stitched together from a combination of the body parts of their fallen comrades, weapons and machinery — a desperate Hitler’s last ghastly ploy to escape defeat.

MPI/Dark Sky Films original horror productions include genre films such as Ti West’s The House of the Devil, Adam Green’s Hatchet II, Jim Mickle’s Stake Land and The Innkeepers.

Momentum's recent rollouts include The King’s Speech, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Troll Hunter and Let the Right One In, and the distributor is gearing up for the U.K. launch of The Woman in Black and The Raid.

XYZ Films produced The Raid, a Sony Pictures Classics release stateside.