The Brit 50: Free Range Films

Need to know: Kevin Loader ran Free Range Films with director Roger Michell until the latter’s sudden death in 2021. Loader subsequently teamed up with Tim Haslam and Hugo Grumbar’s UK sales outfit Embankment Films to create umbrella company Free Range Entertainment. While not everything Loader produces goes through this partnership, all come under his Free Range Films.

Loader’s latest feature, Nicholas Hytner’s The Choral, is being released worldwide by Sony Pictures Classics. The Toronto premiere reunites Loader with Hytner and writer Alan Bennett following The Lady In The Van, The History Boys and The Madness Of King George. Ralph Fiennes stars as a choirmaster in a Yorkshire town during the First World War.

The production in late 2024 was one of the first films to access the Independent Film Tax Credit (IFTC). “The IFTC was the difference between The Choral being made and not being made,” says Loader. “We kept bumping up against the fact that we had a £500,000 gap we couldn’t see how we could fill. We made it for just over £8m but that was resourceful. It took all the skill Nick Hytner and all of us have learned over decades.”

Key personnel: Kevin Loader, founder and producer.

Incoming: Loader is producing Susanna White’s Prima Facie, starring Cynthia Erivo, for Australia’s Bunya Productions and Embankment Films, now shooting at Mortlake Studios in London. Prima Facie is based on the hit play by Australian playwright Suzie Miller, about a lawyer defending victims of sexual assault who finds justice hard to come by when she is raped by a co-worker. Bunya acquired the film rights and asked Loader to produce the Australia-UK co-­production. Sony has pre-bought territories including UK & Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

“There’s quite a lot of equity in it,” says Loader, in reference to US-based fund Camelback and Australian philanthropic foundation Minderoo. “Minderoo’s agenda is similar to that of the former Participant [which was originally backing the project]. They like to do things with a liberal and progressive agenda.”

Prima Facie is also being supported by the UK’s Independent Film Tax Credit (IFTC), as well as Screen Australia where the film will do its post-production. 

Richard Eyre’s The Housekeeper, starring Anthony Hopkins, could shoot in the UK in early 2026, as a collaboration between Loader and Julia Taylor-­Stanley of Artemis Films. Rose Tremain has written the fictionalised story of the origins of Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca.

Loader is also eyeing a mid-2026 start for his next, as-yet-untitled film with Armando Iannucci. Film­Nation, with which Loader and Iannucci made The Personal History Of David Copperfield, is on board. “We’ve got two or three films cooking away,” says Loader of his collaborations with Iannucci. “Armando has many fronts on which his genius operates. The challenge is getting him to carve out time to focus.”

Kevin Loader says: “The stressful bit of independent production is how you get pre-­production done while you haven’t closed finance. You’re basically trying to start a manu­facturing process without any cashflow. There doesn’t seem to be any understanding from the rest of the film landscape of how big an ask that is.”

Contact: kevinloader@me.com

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