After producing Rose Glass’s first two features, Oliver Kassman’s company is plotting its next steps
Need to know: Two collaborations with writer-director Rose Glass have put Oliver Kassman’s Escape Plan on the map, 10 years since he started the company. Having met the filmmaker when he was working for Michael Kuhn’s Qwerty Films, Kassman produced Glass’s feature debut, religious horror Saint Maud, in 2019. It scored 17 Bifa nominations – still a record for one film – and won the best cinematography and debut director prizes, as well as Bafta nominations for outstanding British film and debut by a British writer, director or producer.
Escape Plan then teamed with A24 on Glass’s next film Love Lies Bleeding, a crime drama about a gym manager who falls for a bodybuilder, with Kristen Stewart leading the cast. The film scored nominations at the Baftas, Gothams and Independent Spirit awards, and took almost $13m worldwide; Kassman produced both titles alongside Andrea Cornwell of Lobo Films.
In 2022 Escape Plan produced Andrew Cumming’s directorial debut Out Of Darkness, a Stone Age thriller about a group of early humans being hunted by a malevolent being.
Kassman works alongside Anna Keeley, who joined him as an assistant in 2021 and now has her own slate of projects as a producer.
Key personnel: Oliver Kassman, Anna Keeley, producers.
Incoming: First up will be Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s comedy Wicker, currently in post ahead of a launch next year, which Kassman joined as a freelance producer. Writer-director Zu Quirke’s horror The Fell, which Escape Plan is producing with David Michôd and Brad Zimmerman’s Yoki, and Stewart, Dylan Meyer and Maggie McLean’s Nevermind, is gearing up for an early 2026 shoot.
Also due next year is Chloe Wicks’ debut feature, thriller Love Me, developed with Film4. Escape Plan is cooking up films with several of its previous collaborators, while Keeley has projects including Screen Star of Tomorrow Liam White’s debut Punch-Drunk.
Oliver Kassman says: “Independent film is a small but intense ecosystem. It can be like the Spider-Man meme of everyone pointing at each other; we have to turn around and look at the people we work for which is the audience. Movies are harder to have on in the background while you’re cooking; people need a reason to put everything down and watch. But they’re special because of that.”
Contact: contact@escapeplan.co.uk
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