JOHN N. SMITH TO HELM ENGLISHMAN'S BOY FOR Minds Eye Entertainment
Award-Winning Dangerous Minds Director Wins Top Spot On Long-Awaited Film Version of Acclaimed Novel

Released: May 18, 1999

(CANNES) John N. Smith will direct The Englishman's Boy, it was announced today by Minds Eye Entertainment CEO and executive producer Kevin DeWalt, ending speculation about creative direction of the eagerly anticipated film version of Guy Vanderhaeghe's acclaimed 1997 novel of the American West.

Principle photography on the film, budgeted at $40 million, will begin in summer, 2000 in both the U.S. and Canada.

Film rights to The Englishman's Boy, which won Canada's prestigious Governor General's Literary Award, were acquired in a hotly competitive market by Minds Eye Entertainment in early 1997 after the book topped the Canadian bestseller list. Minds Eye Entertainment and Vanderhaeghe, a two-time Governor General's Literary Award winner, have collaborated for two years on development of the property as a film, just this spring ready to attach a director.

Smith, whose best-known work in the U.S. is Dangerous Minds (Micelle Pfeiffer), most recently directed A Cool, Dry Place, starring Vince Vaughn. He is also known for his CBS/CBC miniseries The Boys of St. Vincent, nominated in 1995 for an Independent Spirit Award as Best Foreign Film.

"With John's reputation in Hollywood as an actor's director, I'm very confident in the 'A' level cast this project will attract," says DeWalt. "Also, it certainly doesn't hurt that Dangerous Minds grossed close to $200 million."

The Englishman's Boy weaves together two stories - one based on the Great Plains of North America in the late 1800s and the other in the glitz of 1920s Hollywood. The first is the personal saga of Shorty McAdoo, a young servant-turned-cowboy whose unwitting pact with a group of vigilantes leads to the brutal massacre of almost the entire native Assiniboine tribe. The second follows the frustrated screenwriter Harry Vincent, plucked from obscurity to track down and betray the confidence of the now-aged cowboy, rewriting history into a silent film that perpetrates the Hollywood lies of America's Wild West.

Established in 1986, Minds Eye Entertainment is a fully integrated production, post-production and distribution entity with offices throughout Canada and now in Los Angeles. Its award-winning television series, made-for-television movies and feature films have been sold in more than 100 countries.