Independent Los Angeles-based film producer Niels Juul (“Ferrari,” “Killers of the Flower Moon”) is setting up an outpost in Italy and has acquired the rights to make a feature film about Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla.
Juul’s No Fat Ego shingle has secured rights to the book “Lucio C’è,” published by prominent Italian imprint Mondadori and written by Marcello Balestra, Dalla’s lifelong friend and manager.
Dalla, whose musical genres ranged from folk to jazz to classical, died in 2012 in Montreux, Switzerland during a European concert tour. He was 68. His hits included the melody “Caruso,” which sold 9 million copies worldwide and was sung by the late opera great Luciano Pavarotti with Dalla at a 1992 concert in Modena. Dalla frequently toured abroad, including in the U.S., sometimes with fellow famed Italian folksong writer Francesco De Gregori.
No Fat Ego will open offices in Rome and Milan in October, with plans to produce four to six feature films per year in collaboration with strategic partners while also aiming to attract foreign productions to Italy.
“I went to study in Italy when I was very young and have always felt at home here and admired the unique creative Italian spirit both when I worked in fashion [Von Dutch] and film,” Juul said in a statement. “I’ve also been very fortunate to meet and learn from creative giants like Giorgio Armani and Vittorio Cecchi Gori, and am truly looking forward to bring Italian based stories to the world in collaboration with some of the best Italian producers around.”
The company’s previously announced Italian projects include “The Lion of Orvieto,” a biopic of Giancarlo Parretti, the flamboyant Italian waiter-turned-financier who bought MGM in 1990 and was ousted and indicted when his takeover deal for the Hollywood studio collapsed. The Parretti project is penned by U.S. comedy writer Michael O’Rourke, who worked with Sacha Baron Cohen on “Da Ali G Show.”