A PRODUCTION company has secured funding to film nine Hollywood-backed movies – with a joint budget of more than £200m – across the North-East and North Yorkshire.

It is hoped locations including York, Newcastle, Durham City, the Tees Valley and North York Moors, will form sets for films ranging from a £26m fantasy adventure to a £35m biopic of Captain James Cook’s early life.

The movies, which will be filmed from September, are expected to feature an array of A-list actors and generate millions of pounds for the region’s economy from film related tourism.

Independent film-makers Liquid Noise Films North, whose team includes Newcastle actor Craig Conway, best selling novelist GP Taylor and North Yorkshire-raised producer and director duo Julian and Lionel Hicks, hope their North-East initiative will spark a long-term renaissance in the British film industry.

Julian Hicks said most of the productions were more than two-thirds financed by a mix of overseas and British investors, including Los Angeles-based collective Finish Line Productions.

He said that Liquid Noise’s long-term goal was to set up a self-sufficient studio in the region.

Mr Hicks said: “The North-East has so much to offer in regards to facilities and people that it makes the work of a producer so much easier and with so many ready-made locations we would like to bring a little bit of Hollywood to this part of Britain.”

Mr Hicks said the firm was looking for local crew, background artists, investors and studio staff to work on the productions.

He said: “Our idea is to set up a repertory of actors, directors and crew, which was once the tradition in the heyday of the British film industry.”

Former Northallerton and Stokesley policeman Mr Taylor, whose novel Mariah Mundi is to be released next year as a blockbuster starring Michael Sheen, Sam Neill, Ioan Gruffudd and Keeley Hawes, said he was delighted two of his novels, Tersias and The Vampyre Quartet, would be filmed where he had set them.

He said: “We are all from and committed to the North- East. There will be no running off because we get a better deal down south and want to give something back to the communities here.”

A spokesman for Northern Film and Media said the movies would transform the region’s film industry if they all came to fruition as well as attracting crowds of tourists.

He said: “The Harry Potter films have been credited with boosting Alnwick’s economy by £9m, while Atonement has seen visitor numbers in Redcar go up and the publicity value of the first series of Vera was £90m.”

COMING SOON.

Liquid Noise North films to be shot in the North-East and North Yorkshire include: * X-Breed – a £3.5m science-fiction thriller about soldiers sent into a military academy, to be filmed in York and Newcastle in the autumn.

* Tersias – GP Taylor’s fantasy adventure of night chases, double-crossings and magic, with locations that will include York, Yarm, Northallerton and Bedale.

* Fort Venus – an epic drama to be shot across the Tees Valley about Captain James Cook’s first voyage that explores his relationship with his wife Elizabeth.

* Vardo – a gritty crime drama set in County Durham and Newcastle about a Gypsy cage fighter, to star Vera Drake and Dog Soldiers actor Craig Conway.

* The Vampyre Quartet – a teen chiller feature set in Whitby, which has been likened to a modern-day Dracula.

* Lenin Athletic – a Full Monty-style comedy drama about a Russian billionaire who takes over a down-at- heel Northern League football club called The Seagulls.

* Jack D’arc – a fantasy thriller set in the 1920s, in which the streets of London will be substituted for those of York and Durham.

* French films ADM and Peephole make up the nine due to be shot in the region, with a budget of £2m each.