Schumacher, Condon, Oxenberg projects get funding

At this year's American Film Market, currently in progress in Santa Monica, Calif., Myriad Pictures said it will finance five films to be produced by Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope and then released domestically through MGM's United Artists division. The Hollywood Reporter notes that three of the five films come from openly gay artists: Joel Schumacher will direct a screen version of Jack Kerouac's On the Road from a script by novelist Russell Banks; Bill Condon's Kinsey, a film biography of pioneer American sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, which Condon will write and direct; and Jan Oxenberg's screen adaptation of James Ellroy's My Dark Places, to be directed by Robert Greenwald (Steal This Movie, Xanadu).