The Brit 50: Magnolia Mae

Need to know: Gabrielle Tana is back working under the Magnolia Mae banner after joining forces with Australia’s Troy Lum and Andrew Mason for London and Sydney-­based Brouhaha Entertainment, which was backed by the Calculus Creative Content EIS Fund. The time difference didn’t make sense, says Tana. She will continue to work on two Brouhaha projects: Dominic Cooke’s Insomniac City with Altitude, and Simon Curtis’s Majesty, a 19th-­century period drama about Caroline of Brunswick that will hopefully shoot in the UK. All Tana’s further projects will fall under Magnolia Mae and her association with Calculus will end.

Key personnel: Gabrielle Tana, founder and producer.

Incoming: Andrew Scott will lead the 1980s-set Elsinore, about the last year in the life of Chariots Of Fire star Ian Charleson, who was playing Hamlet on stage at the National Theatre in the last days of his life before he died aged just 40 in 1990. Charleson was one of the first public figures in the UK to reveal his AIDS diagnosis. Simon Stone, with whom Tana collaborated onThe Dig, is directing from a script by Stephen Beresford. Italy’s Lucky Red is co-producing the film as it will shoot in Italy for a week. 

Stone is also attached to direct Dimensions, about a young woman learning how to survive after a family tragedy, based on the short story by Alice Munro. Eimer McBride has written the adaptation. Stone is also working on his own take on Evelyn Waugh’s novel A Handful Of Dust

Rupert Friend is lined up to star in A Little Madness, to be directed by Tim Wardle, whose credits include the feature documentary Three Identical Strangers. Bill Nicholson has written the script, portraying a man’s descent into mania and psychosis and his journey to recovery, based on the memoir by Horatio Clare. 

An adaptation of Charlie Gilmour’s memoir Featherhood is also in the works, to be directed by Orlando von Einsiedel. It is about a troubled young man who finds solace in caring for a baby magpie as he works through his grief following the death of his estranged father.

Tana is reuniting with Firebrand director Karim Ainouz on a feature called Barbette, written by Martin Sherman and Carolyn Marks-Blackwood.

Gabrielle Tana says: “The climate is so challenging now. To be an independent film producer has never been harder. We need to get people back into cinemas — without that, independent filmmaking as we know will be extinct.”

Contact: info@magnoliamaefilms.com

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