Nicolas Cage Joins Cast of 'Black Butterfly'

COLOGNE, Germany – German production outfit Bavariapool has greenlit its first English-language production, the psycho-thriller Black Butterfly with Nicolas Cage and German actress Veronica Ferres attached to star.

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Cage will play the reclusive author Paul, who befriends a drifter, with fatal consequences. The $13 million feature is based on the French TV thriller Papillon noir  which starred Stephane Freiss and ex-soccer star Eric Cantona as the drifter Jack.

Bavariapool is co-producing Black Butterfly with L.A.-based Paradox Entertainment and with Hyde Park on board as a co-financer. Actor Brian Goodman, who made his directorial debut with the Mark Ruffalo/Ethan Hawke starrer What Doesn’t Kill You (2008), will direct.

Shooting on Black Butterflyis set to start early 2012 in eastern Germany. On Monday, the project picked up $1 million (€750,000) in production subsidies from German regional film funding body the MDM.

Bavariapool is a joint venture between Bavaria Film and Telepool subsidiary Europool, which was set up in 2008 to co-produce bigger budget international film and television projects. Bavaria and Telepool, which share common shareholders in German public broadcasters BR, MDR/Drefa and SWR, last month launched a new joint venture, Global Screen, which will jointly handle the world-wide sale of the two companies’ film and TV series outside of German-speaking Europe.