RatPac Entertainment, the Hollywood financing co-venture between Brett Ratner and James Packer, is investing in Mark Hartley’s documentary on the once-prodigious filmmakers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.
RatPac gets North American rights in return for its investment in Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.
Hartley (Patrick, Not Quite Hollywood) is shooting the documentary which profiles Golan and Globus, Israeli-born cousins nicknamed the ‘Go-Go Boys’ who bought Cannon in 1979, moved to the US and churned out dozens of films, mostly cheap and rapidly-shot.
Their output included Missing in Action, two Death Wish sequels, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, American Ninja, Kickboxer, 52 Pick-Up and Masters of the Universe.
They also produced more eclectic fare such as Andrei Konchalovsky’s Academy Award-nominated Runaway Train, John Cassavetes’ Love Streams, Jean-Luc Godard‘s King Lear and Fred Schepisi’s Evil Angels.
Hartley is interviewing directors and stars who worked for Cannon until the firm nearly went broke in the late 1980s and was taken over by a company controlled by Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti.
Hartley is producing the film with Veronica Fury, whose firm Wild Fury has just merged with Bearcage to create WildBear Entertainment.
Fury tells IF that Hartley met Ratner, who agreed to chip in funds via RatPac Documentary Films to fill a gap in the budget. The other investors include the Melbourne International Film Festival’s Premiere Fund, Film Victoria and Screen Queensland.
RatPac is co-funding an extensive slate of films with Warner Bros. including Gravity and The LEGO Movie and is investing in Russell Crowe's The Water Diviner.
Umbrella Entertainment will release the docu in Australian cinemas and Celluloid Nightmares is the international sales agent. Fury and Hartley first collaborated on Machete Maidens Unleashed!, an expose of the Filipino genre films of the 1970s and 80s.
Fury has just produced for ABC-TV Save Your Life Tonight, a six-part factual entertainment series which shows people having medical screenings and procedures in front of a studio audience