SPC fights for another Mamet project

David Mamet and the world of Jiu-Jitsu fighting? As long as we add the conjob element – then why the hell not? Sony Pictures Classics (who’ve been setting more in the producing game as of late) have announced that they will fully finance and globally distribute the $10 million project set to start production in May in L.A and released the following summer. Chrisann Verges is on board to produce.
  
Though he has done some t.v stuff, Mamet hasn't been back in the ring since the brilliant and little seen Spartan. Based on his original screenplay, Redbelt features Chjwetel Ejiofor in the main role of a Jiu-Jitsu master who has eschewed prizefighting tooperate a self-defense studio. When he is conned by a cabal of movie stars and fight promoters, he must enter the ring to fight in order to regain his honor.

As Variety points out, SPC has a long-standing relationship with the direcotr: Michael Barker and Tom Bernard had been pushing Mamet for the past three years to bring his next low-budgeter to them. Mamet first worked with SPC on 1997 sleeper hit “The Spanish Prisoner,” which Barker and Bernard acquired at the Toronto Film Festival. They also financed and distributed his 1999 pic “The Winslow Boy.”