Electric Shadow Company heads on the UK production-finance outfit’s ambitious slate | Features
Director John Jencks and producer Jay Taylor’s British isles output and financing outfit Electric Shadow Company features an ambitious slate. Titles contain making Rupert Sanders’ reimagining of James O’Barr’s comic guide The Crow, starring Bill Skarsgard and FKA Twigs — which FilmNation Leisure is introducing to potential buyers at Cannes — in addition to a slew of assignments in progress, together with Zoo director Colin McIvor’s Beeswing.
Jencks (chair) and Taylor (CEO)have been making up Electric Shadow Corporation for 17 a long time. They satisfied as youngsters, going in the very same west London social circles. Jencks headed off to study film at New York Movie Academy, although Taylor created the zeitgeisty Channel 4 tunes present Popworld, in advance of transitioning into options, working for The Weinstein Company and Functioning Title. Jencks returned from the US and the pair reconnected and manufactured brief movie The Vicious Circle Of Good results. In 2005 they fashioned their very own outfit, Sane and Diddly, alongside producer Alexa Seligman (who later on remaining the organization in 2017), rebranding to Electric Shadow Corporation in 2008.
“We ended up very superior at creation, we experienced that practical experience. But the other side of the business, the marketing aspect, we weren’t specifically clued up on,” says Taylor. They slice their tooth on self-funded characteristic The Fold, which Jencks directed, just before using hole funding to make Amy Heckerling’s 2012 comedy horror Vamps. Characteristics which includes The Hallow, Appreciate Me Like You Do and Swallows And Amazons adopted.
Squaring the dice
The Hippopotamus — primarily based on the comic novel by Stephen Fry and starring Roger Allam — had the makings of the outfit’s breakthrough project, with United kingdom distributor Metrodome connected, right up until, that is, the distributor went into administration, leaving Jencks and Taylor to place the aspect out themselves.
To maintain money coming in, the organization released J Cubed Film Finance, with movie financier Joe Simpson and a wide variety of senior loan companies. By means of this, Jencks and Taylor started delivering function movies with gap funding. This design was a achievement, with J Cubed securing more than 30 discounts in the space of 18 months, for titles which includes Out Of The Blue, Danger Shut: The Battle Of Extensive Tan and Guns Akimbo. As a result of Electrical Shadow Corporation, the duo also served finance Philip Barantini’s modern Bafta contender Boiling Point.
But Electric Shadow Organization had its possess artistic itch that necessary scratching. “We began to imagine, ‘We’re undertaking all this do the job obtaining other people’s films built, and we’re not carrying out any of our possess stuff,’” recollects Jencks. The corporation has therefore relaunched with a renewed fascination in in-house growth, and a aim on buying Uk rights to the projects the outfit is associated in. Two new hires have been created to mirror the company’s refresh, getting the complete range of total-time workforce to six.
Isabel Freer is head of improvement of all Tv set and documentary characteristics, and is also responsible for sourcing new mental home to develop, finance and deliver. Freer’s earlier credits incorporate as a co-producer on Nick Hamm’s The Journey, and as an executive on The Unsure Kingdom, a feature growth fund launched by Jencks.
Kwesi Dickson has joined as head of creation finance, owning beforehand labored as a producer on MJ Bassett’s Rogue and Magnus Martens’ SAS: Pink Detect, each Electrical Shadow Firm govt produced.
The Crow is now in pre-manufacturing, though Beeswing is staying created with Northern Eire Monitor. The relatives comedy, encouraged by a correct tale, is set in 1842 in a remote Scottish village, in which long run prosperity is pegged on an aged mare named Beeswing winning at the Ascot race meet. Generation on the aspect — co-composed by Ga Goggin, producer of Pretty Pink Costume — is established to begin at the stop of the calendar year.
Documentaries are an additional critical focus, with two co-productions in the will work with Uk documentary outfit Rogan Productions, titled Original Sin and Project Hollywood.
“I never feel there’s one particular variety of Electrical Shadow venture,” claims Jencks. “If it’s one particular we have been involved with from the really commencing, it’s acquired to work on a number of ranges. I really do not feel we would ever do a Fast & Furious movie which is purely visceral, but we would also in no way do the most talky French arthouse film. The pleasure of movie is that it delivers a substantial breadth of the human experience.”