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Fraser is currently in production on BEN
HUR, a feature-length animated film which he is Executive
Producing for Good Times Entertainment. This new version of Lew
Wallace’s classic 1880 novel, Ben Hur, A Tale of the Christ, will
star Charlton Heston, who will narrate the story as well as voicing
the title role in a reprise of his Oscar-winning performance.
BEN HUR is Fraser’s second collaboration with Good Times, since
Agamemnon’s highly successful production of Charlton Heston Presents:
THE BIBLE. This is the first time BEN HUR has been produced in
an animated version, which Fraser is confident will be both highly
entertaining and accessible to families, adults and children alike.
The film will be released by Good
Times Entertainment in time for the 2002 holiday season.
Also a keen pilot and mountaineer, Fraser jumped at the chance
to direct Castle Rock's ALASKA, an outdoor
family adventure film, starring Vincent Kartheiser, Dirk Benedict,
and Aggie, the world's only trained polar bear. Heston enthusiastically
drew on his own experience and adventures In the Alaskan wilderness.
ALASKA was filmed on the waters off Vancouver Island and in remote
locations in Alaska, Baffin Island and British Columbia's Pemberton
Ice Cap. The project itself became something of a real-life adventure
when the director's bush-plane crashed and he had to hike out
with his pilot.
Castle Rock was also the home for his feature directorial
debut, NEEDFUL THINGS, the dark Stephen
King thriller about what happens when the Devil comes to small
town in Maine. The film starred Ed Harris and Max Von Sydow, and
has since acquired something of a cult following. On that film,
with innovative editor Rob Kobrin, Fraser became the first director
to edit a feature using AVID digital film-editing technology.
In addition to his original works, Fraser has displayed a
flair for faithful adaptations as evidenced by his screenplays
based on the work of Bolt and Stephenson. His next project was
THE CRUCIFER OF BLOOD, also for TNT,
which he directed, produced and adapted for the screen. Fraser
turned Paul Giovanni's Tony-nominated play into a cinematic journey
that challenged the legendary Sherlock Holmes to solve a compelling
mystery which began during the Indian Mutiny at the Red Fort of
Agra.
While developing his next Castle Rock Project, Fraser took
time off to produce THE BIBLE, a four-hour
multimedia documentary under his Agamemnon banner for The Arts
and Entertainment Network. Agamemnon Films has marketed the immensely
successful four-video series of THE BIBLE through a video distribution
deal with Good Times Distribution which includes direct marketing
and an infomercial. To date, THE BIBLE has grossed in excess of
fifty million dollars in retail video sales world-wide.
Fraser continued his long-time collaboration with Martin Shafer
at Castle Rock Entertainment as the second unit director on the
feature film, CITY SLICKERS, filming the
famous running of the bulls sequence in Pamplona.
An avid ocean sailor and naval history buff, Fraser made his
directorial debut with a lifelong dream: Robert Louis Stephenson's
TREASURE ISLAND, which was filmed
in England, Jamaica, and on board the HMS Bounty. Fraser also
wrote the screenplay and produced the project for TNT. The film
was released theatrically overseas by Warner Brothers, and became
TNT's most successful original production to date.
In 1987 Fraser took Agamemnon Films to Ted Turner's fledgling
Turner Network Television, where he adapted and produced TNT's
first Original Production, A MAN FOR ALL
SEASONS, starring Charlton Heston, Vanessa
Redgrave and Sir
John Gielgud, based on the award-winning play by Robert Bolt.
In 1981, Heston formed his own production company, Agamemnon
Films. Under this banner, he wrote, produced and distributed the
independent feature MOTHER LODE,
which starred his father and Nick
Mancuso and marked the feature-film debut of Kim
Basinger. While continuing to take assignments as a screenwriter,
Fraser broadened his production experience as co-producer, with
Frank Von Zerneck, of the modern-day western PROUD
MEN, for ABC, starring Peter Strauss.
While in the process of writing Wind River, a romantic
adventure novel about 19th-century fur trappers, Fraser was convinced
by producer Martin Shafer to turn the story into a film script.
Discovering that film-writing came naturally for him, 22-year-old
Fraser wrote his first screenplay, THE
MOUNTAIN MEN, for Columbia Pictures, which became the critically
acclaimed feature film starring his father Charlton Heston and
Brian
Keith.
Fraser began his education as a film-maker at age 16, (not
counting his acting debut as the Baby Moses in C. B. DeMille's
TEN
COMMANDMENTS at age 3 months) when he worked as assistant
director to legendary second unit director Joe Canutt, on ANTONY
& CLEOPATRA. He studied marine biology at the University of
California at San Diego, but intent on becoming a writer, went
on to study English literature and history at UCLA, spending his
summers as a white water river guide in Idaho and Alaska.
Fraser continues his outdoor adventures, which have included
mountain climbing & white-water expeditions in Alaska, Canada,
Africa, Scotland and Europe, photographic expeditions to the Amazon
and Australia, a diving expedition to the Red Sea, an expedition
to study humpback whales in Hawaii, sailing in the North Sea,
The Mediterranean, the Aegean, British Columbia, and the North
Pacific. In 1989, Fraser took part in a sailing expedition with
director William A. Graham & producer Rodger Gimbel, around Cape
Horn. He continues to publish stories and articles about his adventures
(read his article from Yachting, Cruising
Cape Horn.
Fraser is a member of the Directors
Guild of America, the Writers
Guild of America West, The Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the British
Academy of Film and Television. He is also a member of the
Royal Vancouver
Yacht Club in Vancouver, Canada and the Groucho Club of London.
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