Central Partnership to make ‘Nasha’ pic
Russian TV show to get feature-length treatment

Variety
By Nick Holdsworth
February 9, 2008

Russian independent production, sales and distribution shingle Central
Partnership is set to make a feature-length movie based on hit local
television comedy show "Nasha Rasha."

The weekly comedy sketch show — which takes its title from a play on
words and the English pronunciation of Russia and translates to "Our
Russia" — is a hit on youth channel TNT with market share of some
20%.

Produced by Comedy Club Production — the company behind last month’s
surprise box office success "Very Best Film" — "Nasha Rasha" is
hugely popular with 14- to 25-year-olds, Russia’s key movie-going age
group.

Featuring two comics, Sergei Svetlakov and Misha Galustyan, who play a
variety of familiar Russian characters such as migrant workers, old
"babushki" grannies and homeless "bomzhi," "Nasha Rasha" has achieved
cult status in the two years since it launched.

Central Partnership wants to capitalize on that by creating a feature
script for the first movie in what they hope will become a
long-running franchise.

"It is going to be a full feature film, something like ‘American Pie’
that becomes a brand and a franchise. We are intending to establish a
strategic partnership with Comedy Club to create a sustainable
long-term product," Armen Dishdishian, head of Central Partnership
Sales House said.

Central Partnership, which is in Berlin with a raft of Russian titles,
including "12," Nikita Mikhalkov’s remake of Sidney Lumet’s 1957 jury
drama "12 Angry Men," is also developing thematic movie strands in two
other directions.

Anna Melikyan, director of Sundance award-winning "Mermaid," who is
married to Central Partnership founder and company head Ruben
Dishdishian, will develop arthouse fare with bright young directors
from Russia and former Soviet states via Magnum, a new company set up
for that purpose.

Producer Alexei Sidorov, who directed Central Partnership’s "Shadow
Boxing" and produced its recent sequel "Shadow Boxing 2" will work
with helmer Anton Megerdichev on creating big-budget commercially
oriented films. Projects in the pipeline currently include horror
thriller "Ghosts."

"The success of ‘Very Best Film’ shows there is a market for such
films. We understand that as part of our overall strategy ‘Nasha
Rasha’ has to be a first week film," Dishdishian said, meaning the
movie would need to make the majority of its box office over its
opening days.

"Of course we think it is possible to do a better film that is not
just a series of sketches, which is why we are working to polish and
improve the script we have from Comedy Club," he said. "We’re not
aiming to make an Oscar film, but want to be sure that people do not
leave the cinema thinking they could have seen the same thing on
television."

Wider audiences, which in Russia have only just begun to return to the
cinemamore than a decade after barely any over 30 went, need to
nurtured if the local industry is to have a sustainable future,
Dishdishian noted.