Theatre billionaire John Gore on his £100m bet on the UK film industry

Theatre impresario John Gore — who has backed hit stage shows such as Hamil­ton and The Book Of Mormon — was sitting next to Joan Collins at a King’s Trust dinner in late 2023 when the legendary British actress pitched him a film project.

It was a story, ironically given the setting, about Wallis Simpson, the US divorcee whose marriage to King Edward VIII sparked a crisis for the UK monarchy. But this project, written for Collins by Louise Fennell, focused on Simpson’s final years when a coercive French lawyer took control of her life, cutting her off from friends and family. 

Fast forward to Cannes 2026, and My Duchess, directed by Mike Newell and starring Collins as Simpson alongside Isabella Rossellini, will have its market premiere, with Embankment Films handling sales. “I feel that it’s the performance of her life,” says Gore, who agreed to fully fund the movie after meeting Collins at the dinner.

The story illustrates the speed at which Gore works, and the kind of projects he backs. My Duchess is one of six UK films featuring high-profile talent that he has bankrolled and produced since launching London-based John Gore Studios in January 2025 (see box at the bottom).

At the same time, John Gore Studios has been on an acquisition spree, buying a string of established UK companies — spanning production, IP, distribution and sales — with the ambition of building a vertically integrated film and TV studio operation (see below). 

In total, Gore says he has invested $135m (£100m) so far on building up John Gore Studios. At a time when many companies are reining in spend on film and TV, the creation of a new studio business is a significant shot in the arm for the UK industry. 

As John Gore Studios brings its film projects to Cannes, the big question is, how will this bet play out? For some, Gore has been canny in his timing, investing at an opportune moment given the widespread production slowdown and greater talent availability — and he comes with an impressive track record in show business. But, as many point out, it is not easy to find success in the notoriously difficult UK film industry.

Origin story

Speaking from New York, Gore says he is nursing a “thick head” the morning after celebrating the Broadway premiere of Schmigadoon!, a send-up of musicals that The New York Times declared “a blast”. It is the run-up to the Tony Awards, he explains, an important launch moment in the theatre calendar. “If you win a Tony for best musical, it’s worth more than winning an Oscar for best picture. It’s basically a $100m prize.” (A few days later, Schmigadoon! picked up 12 Tony nominations)

If anyone should know about the economics of the theatre, it is Gore, who has 25 Tonys to his name. The UK entrepreneur has made a fortune in theatre — The Sunday Times Rich List put his worth at $2.9bn (£2.2bn) in 2025 — since leaving the UK in his mid-twenties to produce stage shows in the US. But he has always harboured an ambition to make films and TV shows, growing up watching foreign-language features on the BBC as well as Thunderbirds, Alfred Hitchcock and the Hammer horror films. “I wanted to be doing these things,” he says.

Gore was, however, initially pulled towards the theatre. It started at Harrow, the UK public school where much of his education took place. “I was the second boy to direct a play at my school. The first was a total unknown called Richard Curtis,” he says with a laugh, referring to the director of Love Actually. “He kicked down the doors. He [co-directed] with a teacher. I went one step further — I fired the teacher.”

Gore went on to train as an actor and director at Royal Holloway, University of London. Aged 25, he produced a stage version of Thunderbirds i n the West End, working with its creator Gerry Anderson, who he describes as an important mentor. 

He also worked with Warner Bros, directing a stage version of the Batman TV show and sharing an office with its producer Simon Cowell. Both wanted to take it to the West End, but Warners pulled the plug when it started making Tim Burton’s more serious movie.

Soon after, Gore moved to the US, establishing himself as a theatre producer, financier and distributor through his wholly owned John Gore Organisation. It owns Broadway Across America, a major presenter and producer of touring musicals and stage plays across more than 45 cities in the US and Canada, as well as ticket operation Broadway.com.

As an investor, Gore has backed hits such as Hamilton and Moulin Rouge. “We usually don’t take more than 5% because we cover a lot of shows,” he says. “But then we are the distributor of them too.”

Theatre may have a reputation as a money pit but the rewards are enormous when a show strikes the jackpot. “The studios are all making shows for Broadway. We spend a lot of time with Universal, with Warner Bros — their highest-grossing products are theatre,” says Gore.

He cites Universal’s Wicked andWicked: For Good, which together earned $1.3bn at the global box office. “That’s about 10% of what the actual musical has done,” he claims. “The numbers on theatre are staggering. It leaves Avatar, all of them, behind. The Lion King musical is now at a $15bn gross.”

For Gore, the launch of his UK film and TV business was about satisfying his early desire to work in the industry. “I always hoped to do film and TV, but instead the theatre thing got bigger and bigger,” he says. “It’s taken this long to be [in the position] where I can personally be the greenlight.”

Staffing up

John Gore Studios officially launched in January 2025, with Gore appointing Hilary Strong as CEO. Bringing a long track record in film, TV and IP, Strong is the former head of Agatha Christie Ltd, where she helped revamp the mystery writer’s estate as viable film and TV property, along the way executive producing Kenneth Branagh’s 2017 feature Murder On The Orient Express and 2015 BBC series And Then There Were None.

She also co-founded International Literary Properties to manage IP for literary estates, and is a former commercial director at leading UK indie TV outfit Hat Trick Productions.

The studios’ executive team is rounded out by chief acquisition officer Jonathan Lack, creative director Francis Hopkinson and COO and general counsel Anouska Spiers.

Gore and Strong had met years before through Jamie Anderson, who is the son of Thunderbirds’ Gerry, and began talking seriously about working together after Strong left her role at ILP in September 2024.

“John felt that at a time when so much financial support for the industry had been withdrawn for various reasons, it was a [moment] to do something new and different in a scaled and serious way in the UK,” recalls Strong, speaking in the studios’ UK headquarters at 141 Wardour Street — the former UK home of Warner Bros and the Moving Picture Company. (While the company now has around 150 employees, most still work in their original offices.)

“When there is less investment, there are not less brilliant creative ideas or less talent, but maybe less places to go to make them happen,” she continues. “So it’s been a very interesting journey for the past 15 months. We’ve been inundated with brilliant ideas and great projects — maybe in a way that we might not have been 10 or even five years ago.”

All in on IP

By the time Strong came on board, Gore had already acquired Hammer — alerted by Anderson to the fact the legendary horror brand was up for sale. That 2023 deal marked the moment Gore started to create a UK film and TV business.

“It was all because of Hammer, when I got the chance to pull it out of bankruptcy,” he says, describing the acquisition as “a leap of faith”, while acknowledging the company’s complicated history and “library of 300 films with very split ownerships”.

Gore and his executive team have since set about trying to create a “fully blown” vertically integrated film and TV studio, similar to his US theatre model. Their focus is twofold: revamping and exploiting iconic IP, as well as producing original film and TV.

With Hammer came a big library, which was bolstered last year with the acquisition of genre banner Tyburn Film Productions, known for 1973’s The Creeping Flesh and 1975’s Legend Of The Werewolf. Strong says the company is in advanced discussions to buy a number of literary IPs.

In September 2024, the studio bought London-based Silver Salt Restoration, which is helping to restore classic Hammer films. Last year, it premiered a 4K restoration of The Curse Of Frankenstein (1957), and this year is set to release a restored version of Dracula (1958), starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. 

To help rebuild the brand, it has also released lavish box editions of Hammer titles, aimed at collectors, which include interviews, documentaries, essays and behind-the-scenes images.

It is also working on reboots of Hammer films, including a TV version of Dracula and new films under the Hammer banner. The first to go into production in January 2025 was Casey Walker’s Ithaqua, starring Luke Hemsworth. Set in 1800s Canada, it centres on survivors at a remote fur trading outpost who are plagued by a mythical snow beast.

Building a studio

Another piece of the puzzle was found in November 2024, when Gore acquired KFilm, adding sales and distribution to the mix.

KFilm is the parent company of distributors Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment, Icon Film Distribution and Platform Entertainment, and international sales outfit Kaleidoscope Film Distribution (KFD), which launched sales on Ithaqua at this year’s European Film Market.

In October 2025, it expanded its UK production capabilities, taking a majority investment in Hilltop Screen, the production company founded by drama producer Hilary Bevan Jones and leading media lawyer Medwyn Jones.

At the same time, John Gore Studios has built up an in-house development team, headed by creative director Hopkinson. An experienced producer who has worked at ITV Studios, Left Bank Pictures and Channel 4, Hopkinson first worked with Gore and Strong as producer on My Duchess, and is now building a development slate for the studio across its own IP and new projects.

Earlier this year, the company acquired a majority stake in Deep Fusion Films, regarded as a pioneer in responsible AI production in the screen sector, headed by Benjamin Field and Anderson. Deep Fusion will produce its own projects, while also helping John Gore Studios with AI tools and workflows for use across development, production, marketing and archive-led projects. 

Its most recent acquisition, in April, was famed UK costumier Angels Costumes, a key supplier to global film, TV and theatre productions, and home to more than a million costumes. 

There are more acquisitions to come. Strong says the studio is on the lookout for more production companies that it can help to grow. “I’d love to work with a top producer in the horror space,” she says. It is also interested in other literary and film libraries, and is in the process of buying a back-office business to support line production and tax credit structuring.

Gore, meanwhile, says one “obvious” missing element for a UK vertically integrated studio is a studio lot. But he sounds undecided. “The problem is that if we buy the real estate, then to make it work, you have to rent it out,” he notes. 

Strong insists John Gore Studios is different from production company “roll ups” like Banijay or All3Media that are based around an in-house distributor. “We are an integrated, bottom-to-top studio,” she says. “We’re a studio in the sense that we are self-financing.” That said, each acquired company will retain its own identity and will service businesses outside the group. KFD, for example, sells productions beyond in-house films and shows, while Silver Salt also works on external restoration projects.

In production

Most John Gore Studios projects have been fully financed by Gore, with a focus on films in the $6m-$20m (£5m-£15m) budget range.

Some, like The Return Of Stanley Atwell, starring Nicholas Galitzine and Ella Purnell, which Liza Marshall’s Hera Pictures originated and Protagonist Pictures is selling, have scored pre-sales, whileFrank And Percy — an adaptation of the hit West End play starring Ian McKellen and Roger Allam, with both actors reprising their roles — was co-financed with the late Bill Kenwright’s BK Studios. 

“We might make things that are larger, but we would do that with somebody else rather than putting all the equity on the table,” says Strong.

The studio’s only minority-financed production is The Queen Of Fashion, a biopic of the late UK fashion figure Isabella Blow starring Andrea Riseborough. “We thought it was a great project and they were missing the last bit,” says Strong. “But it’s not something we generally will do. For us, it’s about having a real creative voice. That’s important to John. So we tend to either co-finance or wholly finance the films we make.”

How involved is Gore in the decision making? “I am the greenlight,” he says. “There is no other greenlight. It is just me. But the team have worked through everything.”

Strong says John Gore Studios is open to being pitched outside projects, while increasingly generating projects in-house now that its development team under Hopkinson is in place. For her, the starting point is “a great script, a great story, and then work with brilliant directors and producers who are going to attract the on-screen talent you want”.

Sales relationships

Not all films, however, are being sold or distributed in-house. Alongside Embankment repping My Duchess and Protagonist handling The Return Of Stanley Atwell with WME Independent, KFD is selling Frank And Percy andOnward And Sideways starring Laura Linney and Rhys Ifans, as well as Ithaqua, while Rocket Science and CAA Media Finance are selling The Queen Of Fashion. 

Some of these projects came to John Gore Studios with sales companies already attached. “We want to have strong relationships with the entire sales community,” says Strong. “We want to make sure great projects come to us. It’s healthy to have a broad spectrum of relationships.”

Projects developed in-house are more likely to be sold through KFD, she adds: “They’re doing a fantastic job and are growing with us.” 

Likewise, John Gore Studios will distribute in the UK through Icon “where we can, but not always necessarily. They’re a great team. We don’t make it an obligation for people to work with Icon, but we would encourage it.”

Gore also hopes to forge closer bonds with the majors as he continues to build John Gore Studios. “This is not a little British company, we’re trying to develop something big,” he says. “I’ve been around the block enough to know you can’t do a big film without a major releasing it. You can kid yourself and lose loads of money, but if we are going to cross over to that level, it will always be with a major studio partner.”

Looking ahead, there is a sense the studio is taking stock in terms of production after making six films in 15 months. It has yet to greenlight another project, although four or five are at different stages of discussions and Strong envisages making another two films this year. Cannes is a major focus. Collins and Rossellini will attend to promote My Duchess, and all the studio’s projects are being repped in search of international buyers. 

TV is on the agenda too, and Strong hopes the first commissions from its “very healthy TV slate” will start to come through in late 2027 and 2028. TV takes longer to get off the ground, requiring commissioner greenlights. But the ambition is that a significant part of business will come from TV. 

For Gore, there is also a personal commitment to building up the company, and enjoying work with film and TV talent. “The bottom line is, I just wanted to do it,” he says. “I have such a good team running the US. It means I can dedicate my time to putting together the thing that I always wanted to do.”

This can also be seen in his philanthropic activities. Gore is a donor to the National Film and Television School’s expansion, a sponsor of the National Youth Theatre’s Love Bites season and a supporter of Watersprite Film Festival, dedicated to international student films and held each year in Cambridge. He has also partnered with New York’s Julliard to make its acting programme tuition fee-free for students.

After a lifetime in theatre, the permanency of film and TV also sounds a big draw. Gore says his ambition is to make entertainment that endures. “No matter how much we love theatre, it’s gone once it’s over. That’s part of the beauty of it,” he muses. “I would like to be on the sofa in 10 to 15 years’ time and there’s a successful film on that we made — one that people are going to still be watching in 500 years’ time.” 

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