BYRNE SETS COURSE ON 3 PICTURES FOR HIS PRODUCTION ARM

VARIETY - January 24, 1994
Christian Moerk

Hollywood - Gabriel Byrne, the Irish thespian who executive produced the incendiary legal drama In the Name of the Father is putting together a three picture feature slate to be set up at his Dublin-based independent production outfit Mirabilis Films.

Miramax Films, with whose principals Byrne has a close professional rapport, will play exclusive backup on the worldwide distribution side of what Byrne calls “medium budget movies” in the $8 million - $10 million range.

A likely first in front of cameras is the screen adaptation of Dr. Haggard’s Disease, from a novel by up-and-coming Irish author Patrick McGrath.

Starring Byrne, Disease, is a romantic-love story set in London in 1939, at the outbreak of World War II. Byrne, who also will produce, tags it as “an obsessive love affair between a doctor and a woman he happens to meet…your basic sex-and-death story under the buzz bombs of London.”

Shooting in England
Mirabilis, which Byrne recently established with producer Patrick Rainsford, hopes to be shooting somewhere in England this fall. Additional casting has not yet been announced, but Byrne said talks are heating up and “we know who we want.” Rainsford will co-produce Disease.

The only Byrne-backed title not under the Mirabilis banner so far is The Driftwood Tree, a script written by 22-year-old Irish neophyte Richard Dormer.

Tree is the updated film version of an ancient fable set on an island off the coast of Ireland and will be partially funded by the Irish Film Board. Byrne will produce Tree with Thomas Hardiman.

Byrne said he’s enjoying the success of In the Name of the Father, since he went through a few twists and turns to take the story to the screen.

“Father began by coincidence,” Byrne explained, “I read Gerry Conlon’s book Proved Innocent in an airport newsstand and then went to Conlon and asked him if he would give me the rights to the book, which he did.”

But the thespian said he encountered a knee-jerk reaction in the entertainment community. “People told me Father was not a movie,” Byrne said. “But my inner voice told me it was. And now, as the film has been shown in the U.S., people are saying, ‘Hey, maybe our justice system is hot what it’s cracked up to be.” We (Irish filmmakers) are now able to tell our story.”

Byrne just finished Twist of Fate with Steve Martin for Touchstone, which is a Matilda Films production with Rock Kidney producing. The picture also stars Stephen Baldwin and Catherine O’Hara. Byrne also wrapped the recently shot Trial by Jury for Warner Brothers and Morgan Creek.