Pitch – rights from Nick Von Sternberg

JOSEF VON STERNBERG, the fabled Hollywood film director, one of the original riding crop boys, almost lost his mind directing his masterpiece “The Blue Angel” in Berlin in 1929. Director of “Underworld”, “The Last Command”, “Morocco”, “Shanghai Express” and “Blonde Venus”, Von Sternberg faced personal and professional crises in the late twenties. The son of an artist and an artist himself, Joe made a career out of putting the captivating images in his head on the film screen. But now the advent of talking pictures may put an end to his image-driven career. Joe’s “Last Patrol” star and academy award winner, Emil Jannings, has returned to his native Germany. Jannings now chooses his old nemesis Joe von Sternberg to direct his new talking film at the great UFA studio in Berlin.