Turbine’s Andrew Eaton hopes to shoot Night Boat To Tangier with Michael Fassbender in 2026
Need to know: Turbine, part-owned by BBC Studios, works between film and TV, with credits including Steve McQueen’s Small Axe TV film series for the BBC, Constellation for Apple TV and Gareth Evans’ Havoc, starring Tom Hardy, for Netflix. Andrew Eaton, who co-founded Revolution Films with Michael Winterbottom, teamed with former BBC Films and Rainmark Pictures producer Tracey Scoffield to set up Turbine in 2018, joined by producer Justin Thomson and former Film4 lawyer David Tanner.
Key personnel: Andrew Eaton, Tracey Scoffield, Justin Thomson, David Tanner, founders and exec producers.
Incoming: After several quiet years, Eaton predicts 2026 is going to be big. The most eye-catching film project on the slate is Night Boat To Tangier, set to star Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Negga. It is based on the book by Kevin Barry about two small-time Irish criminals hiding out in a Spanish port town. Fassbender and Conor McCaughan’s DMC Film is co-producing, Hyde Park International is handling sales and Studiocanal has pre-bought UK-Ireland rights. An offer is out to an Irish director to take over following James Marsh’s departure from the project.
Barry has adapted his own book. “It’s my favourite script I’ve ever had,” says Eaton, adding that Fassbender’s performance will be worth the wait. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen the full Fassbender – it’s such a brilliant, brilliant part for him.”
Eaton wants to shoot the film in the southern Spanish city of Malaga in late summer 2026. “We’ve been on several location scouts to Malaga and it’s such a brilliant combination of sleaze and sun.”
Turbine also hopes to shoot The Breakaway, a film about the big characters behind the creation of England’s football Premier League. The writer is James Wood (Rev, The Great), and the producer is Julian Bird of sports doc experts Lorton Entertainment. It will be the first scripted project from Lorton which is financing development. Lorton bought the rights to a non-fiction book called Calling The Shots: How To Win In Football And Life by David Dean, former chairman of Arsenal FC and on which Wood’s script is loosely based.
Eaton says it will be funny – and fun to cast. “It’s a caricature of all these old men like [football chairmen] Alan Sugar and Greg Dyke and Sky TV’s Rupert Murdoch,” he chuckles.
Tricky, about the life of UK trip-hop musician Tricky from writer Paul Fraser (Saipan), is in development with the BFI. “It’s an amazing story of a young Black kid from a mixed-race family growing up in Bristol in the 1960s and 1970s,” says Eaton.
Two further films might go in 2026: one with Working Title Films and the other with Netflix. “The good thing about those two is you’re talking to people who have the production financing just to make stuff,” says Eaton.
On the TV side, Turbine is developing a six-part series with the BBC, Germany’s ZDF and AGC, which will shoot in April, another six-part series with Amazon for Ascendant Fox, an eight-part series with Sky and a comedy series written by Ben Elton with BBC studios.
There is no ‘film’ or ‘TV’ department at Turbine. “We don’t make any clear delineation between us,” Eaton says. “The Working Title film is a Tracey film. The BBC series is mine. The Amazon series is David Tanner’s and the BBC Studios series with Ben Elton is Justin. We’re not territorial about it. We try to think of it as, you’re an IP producer, whatever you think you can get to work. For example, the film we’re going to do with Netflix was originally pitched to them as a series and then we decided it would work better as a film.”
Andrew Eaton says: “We’ve done the hardest bit on Night Boat To Tangier, which is to get our own territory [pre-sold], without an American pre-sale. That means all the upsides – if we make a great movie and sell it to America.”
Contact: andrew@turbinestudios.co.uk
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