A new ballgame

KUMAN PICTURES is a new production house, having just been established early this month.
Despite not having released any films as yet, Kuman has already made history as the first production house to agree to share box-office profits with everyone who works on its films – from the cast to the crew.
“It is only fair that we pay ‘royalties’, and we want them to feel a part of something that they have created,” said Amir Muhammad, the managing director for Kuman Pictures, at a recent press event.
Amir, who also runs the publishing house Fixi, is following the same model used by publishers to pay royalties to their authors.
For someone who even pays royalties to his book cover designers, he doesn’t see why paying ‘royalties’ to the cast and crew cannot be implemented by other film production houses.
Amir said: “If their excuse is that it is difficult to pay royalty to their cast and crew, then, we can teach them. There is a certain accounting software that is not difficult to use.”
The idea to start a film production house came about after Amir read well-known American B-movie director Roger Corman’s memoir How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime.
Corman is known as ‘The Pope of Pop Cinema’, and a trailblazer in the world of independent films. He had mentored and inspired many film directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme in their youth, who later went on to make award-winning films.
Asked what impressed him most about Corman, Amir said: “He works with whatever he has. He doesn’t wait for the ideal budget and the ideal cast.”
Kuman will specialise in low-budget horror and thriller films, ranging from RM300,000 to RM500,000 per film.
“We chose the name Kuman, which means ‘germ’, as a reminder to not make big movies,” Amir said.
“Corman said in an interview that he cannot imagine spending US$35 million (RM145 million) on a movie, and ‘if you have that much money, you should fix urban poverty’.”
So what took Amir so long to start a production house?
“In the past, if you started a company, you needed a partner,” he said.
“I did not want to partner someone with money but is not ‘the right one’. I do not want somebody who will be problematic later, for whatever reason.”
Early this year, the government changed the rules on partnerships for production companies, and Amir jumped at the chance to start his.
Kuman already has three local films in production – a Chinese, a Malay and a Tamil film.
The first is Two Sisters, directed by James Lee, who has helmed horror films such as Histeria and Claypot Curry Killers. The RM300,000 film in Mandarin was shot in 13 days in July, and will be released in March next year.
The story centres on the relationship between two sisters (played by Emily Lim and Lim Mei Fen). When one sister is released from an asylum, she moves in with her elder sister in their eerie family home.
Slowly, it will be revealed the sisters are hiding some dark family secrets.
“There is a twist in its ending,” hinted Lee, who is using films like The Sixth Sense and The Others as his inspirations.
The Malay film, Roh, is a period horror film about a family who welcomes a lost child into their isolated house.
The child predicts that everyone in the family will die, and they start to feel a disturbing presence.
Director Emir Ezwan, who is known for his commercials and short films, is making his feature film debut with Roh, which will begin shooting at the end of the year.
“I am going for a tone that is unsettling and bleak,” said Emir, who is a big fan of slow-burn horror and thrillers.
Director M.S. Prem Nath helms the Tamil-language thriller Ghost Hotel which is about a woman who goes in search of her lost brother.

Filming begins next year, with part of the film to be shot in Penang Hill’s Crag Hotel, renowned as one of the most haunted locations in Malaysia.
Prem has high hopes for the film, his fourth directorial effort, saying: “I am thrilled that I will be getting royalties for my film. It has given me the [motivation] to work even harder.”