Killer Films sets up shingle for family movies

Variety reports that Killer Films, best known for gritty adult fare like Boys Don't Cry and Velvet Goldmine, is starting a children's film division. Killer partners Pam Koffler and lesbian indie film icon Christine Vachon are opening Sunshine Films, whose first production will be a screen adaptation of Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family, a series of young-adult books about an Orthodox Jewish family in 1912 Manhattan. While the movie is aimed at a younger crowd, the movie won't shy away from the books' harder-edged undertones. "The books are very sweet and innocent," says Koffler, who, like Vachon, grew up reading the series of novels. "But the family is poor, and they have a difficult life. We want it to remain a children's movie, but we don't want it to lose its teeth."