The Brit 50: Element Pictures

Need to know: Element Pictures has astutely harnessed the soft power and soft money of the UK and Ireland to become a force on the international stage across both film and TV. It has led to serious success at festivals, awards and, crucially, with audiences.

The company, founded in Dublin in 2001, has grown to 12 staff in London and 20 in Dublin. Regular partners include Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, recently directing Venice premieres Bugonia and Poor Things. The latter won the Golden Lion in 2024 and is Element’s biggest-budget project to date (around $35m), grossing $117.6m at the global box office for Searchlight/Disney.

Then there is Irish director Lenny Abrahamson, with whom Element made TV series Normal People (launching the careers of Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones in the process) plus Oscar and Bafta winner Room. Element also produced The Eternal Daughter and The Souvenir Part II for Joanna Hogg.

Supporting fresh talent at the sub-$5m level is a key focus, with a knack for landing coveted Cannes bows for emerging filmmakers, including Akinola Davies Jr’s My Father’s Shadow and Harry Lighton’s Pillion in 2025, as well as Rungano Nyoni’s second feature On Becoming A Guinea Fowl and Ariane Labed’s September Says in 2024.

The company aims to make two or three films and two or three series per year, with a team of five full-time producers in addition to co-­founders Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe. Two producers work just on TV, and three across film and TV.

As well as production, Element has Irish distribution arm Volta Pictures and The Lighthouse cinema in Dublin. ”The Lighthouse gives us a very close connection to filmgoing audiences,” says Guiney. ”We notice the massive appetite for distinctive, ambitious cinema. We are energised and excited by the possibilities of making director-driven cinema that is audience-facing. We’ve done some of that, and we’d like to do more of that.”

Fremantle acquired a majority stake in the company in 2022, which means regular check-ins with Fremantle CEO Christian Vesper and support from Lorenzo De Maio of Fremantle-backed De Maio Entertainment, who particularly helps TV projects find US homes. Lowe says it is an “additive relationship – they [Fremantle] don’t interfere in any way”.

There is no overarching definition of an Element project. “We’re much more defined by our relationships and by the creators that we work with than we are by genre or a particular kind of movie. We’re driven by people,” says Guiney.

“We see our job being to get behind them and support them and have them do the best job that they can do. In that sense, there’s no ego there,” adds Lowe.

Key personnel: Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, co-founders; Chris Aird, head of television drama; Emma Norton, executive producer/­producer; Chelsea Morgan Hoffman, executive producer/producer; Rachel Dargavel, senior production executive/producer.

Incoming: Element is producing Tomas Alfredson’s thriller Séance On A Wet Afternoon alongside Robyn Slovo and Polly Stokes (who originated the project), with Jack Thorne writing the screenplay and Rachel Weisz starring. Shooting begins in London in January, with Film­Nation Entertainment selling internationally. Irish filmmaker Frank Berry’s The Lost Children Of Tuam began shooting in Ireland in September, starring Monica Dolan, with mk2 Films repping international sales. Element is also gearing up to shoot Lenny Abrahamson’s under-the-radar next film in early 2026.

Ed Guiney says: “More than ever, we see ourselves as a European company. We see Europe as our homebase. We want to be even more active with European filmmakers.”

Contact: info@elementpictures.ie 

• The full list of Brit 50 profiles