There is a chapter on this in my biography, so I'll just summarise. 

It was Berlinale and the two exec producers and I were literally celebrating in SOHO house in Berlin, We were literally waiting for a call from an investor to say that their portion of funds was in escrow with the others as had been agreed.

All it took was that one phone call for it all to start falling apart. That one investor decided to finance another project at the last minute, practically on a whim. Without it, the other two financiers wouldn't match or replace it, tax rebates and subsidies we had organised would also need resubmitting. I am generalising what was a very complex situation, but hopefully you get the gist. Domino hits a domino, hits a domino.

There was no great conspiracy or anything working against us, this is the just the unpredictable nature of independent film finance against the more rigid studio system. You see this happen all the time, film productions are about to start and then they just vanish into the ether.  (It's literally a Thanos  type situation, "SNAP" - Gone!)

We had made one big mistake as a production company. We had bought into our own hype about the project and been so sure of ourselves that we hadn't waited for presales cash to hit the coffers. We relied entirely on outside finance to maintain our momentum, preserve 100% of our distribution rights and we messed up big.

Going after presale capital was now no longer going to an option either. We could have sold the film based on the elements (cast, crew, directors) we had in place. With the proposed shooting schedule now out of the window, they were now going to be unavailable.

So that perfect version of FEAR PARIS died back at the Berlin film festival sometimes in 2013.  The only thing that stopped it being the worst day of my professional life was that a PR friend of ours was organising a VIP party. Seeing that we were sad said he would arrange a Bentley to come pick us up and take us to a exclusive champagne party. It was a great party with free everything and it did take the edge off everything. Thanks Stephan!

For the next 12 months we worked to keep the project together, I removed several stories to streamline the budget and to make it more appealing to investors. New stories and Directors were added only to be removed again just as suddenly. 

(NOTE: When I was trying to find which scripts I wanted to upload for people to read I couldn't decide. There are over full 80 revisions and another 100 minor note set revisions of that original draft).

Every new set of writers notes upset me more and more. New people involved didn't seem to get the original scope, vision or eccentricates of the project and wanted their own creative input added. My wife says that during this time when we used to go on our walks in the park she could literally hear me gnashing my teeth together or swearing under my breath about mimes.

Little by little I could literally feel the project I loved chipping away at my soul as I removed more pages until we were finally left with just a 4 story version of the script. It was still good, but nothing as grand as the 8 story shooting script version. At this point all the elements and all but two of the original directors were gone or had given up. I was effectively alone apart from my notes, writing it for free, unwilling to let the project go, unwilling to move on, still believing...

Everyone in Berlin went their separate ways in October 2013 and I moved back to the UK. We didn't really ever spend much time talking about the project again. We all had other things to do at this point.

And thus the world of Fear Paris ended for me, not with a bang, but a whimper.

This page is my tribute to the project and all the people involved. Maybe someone out there would still like to see this project happen, I don't even know who has the rights at this point, I just feel it deserved a little something to remind me of what was.

Sorry this all ends on a downer.... Go read the script and enjoy the artwork.