MOSCOW (Russian Film Business Today) – Shooting of the film The Very Best Film 2 wraððed on August 8. Monumental Ðictures and Comedy Club Ðroduction are producing this sequel to the runaway hit The Very Best Film, which had the best opening weekend in CIS history ($16,484,460) and the best per-screen average for a weekend ($23 482).

Similar to the first part of the franchise, The Very Best Film 2 will be a movie parody. It will lampoon Russian box office hits and popular TV shows from the last two years. The creators and characters in the film will spoof the movies The Heat, We Are from the Future, Irony of Fate 2: The Sequel, 12 and the TV shows King of the Ring, House-2, Malakhov+ and others. The first film saw the big screen debut of director Kirill Kuzin.

This time around, experienced filmmaker Oleg Fomin (Election Day, Gentlemen Officers: To Save the Emperor) will occupy the director’s chair. The cast has changed this time around as well – the only actors who “graduated” to the second films were Mikhail Galustyan (who has a small role this time) and Garik “Bulldog” Kharlamov, who plays one of the main parts in the film. Kharlamov also co-produced the film, along with Michael Schlicht, Paul Heth and Artak Gasparyan. Kharlamov’s showmates star in the film. These are the residents of Comedy Club – Timur Batrutdinov, Dmitry Khrustalyov and Oleg Vereshchagin – who are well-known to Russian TV audiences.

The film also stars Tatyana Lyutayeva, Yekaterina Konisevich, Alexander Bashirov, Dmitry Nagiyev, Sergei Lazarev and other famous Russian show business figures. “The Very Best Film was the first experiment in the movie parody genre,” said Artak Gasparyan. “We learned a lot, and the second film will be more high-quality in both humor and dynamics.

To be sure, we learned from all the mistakes that were evident in our first film.” It is also known that as distinct from its first installment, The Very Best Film 2 will not have any age restrictions. The shoot started on June 10 and took place in Moscow, since all of the events in the film happen there. The Very Best Film 2 is expected to be issued to 800 screens on January 22, 2009. BVSPR (CIS) will distribute the film.