Kevin Loader has an increasingly international outlook. The prolific UK producer (whose forthcoming credits include Good and Brideshead Revisited) is in post-production on The Oxford Murders, a co-production with Spain's Tornasol Films.

Loader's Free Range Film is the UK partner on Alex de la Iglesia's $10m Spain-France-UK project. 'We had an extremely valuable creative role to play because it was an English-language film although it was based on an Argentinian novel option by Spanish producers,' he explains.

And in late October, Loader attended his first co-production market (Film London's inaugural Production Finance Market). Free Range presented a slate of three projects: Tim Sullivan's long-gestating Marathon (likely to shoot in 2009), an adaptation of David Almond's novel The Fire-Eaters which is to be directed by Jonathan Darby, and writer-director Emily Young's screenplay of Andrea Ashworth's Once In A House On Fire.

'[Co-production markets] are a world I think we all ought to be immersing ourselves in more,' Loader says, citing the example of Ken Loach's pan-European financing. 'The more I am seeing how some of these people are managing to maintain a steady stream of production based on these (co-production) relationships, the more I am inclined to find out as much as I can about it.'

Meanwhile, Loader confirms, Hanif Kureishi is at work on a screenplay that Roger Michell will direct - and that it is likely to be structured as a European co-production. This follows on the trio's successful collaborations on Venus, Enduring Love and The Mother.

It is an original screenplay set in Paris, but Loader will not reveal more details to potential co-production partners until Kureishi has finished the screenplay. 'With Hanif, you've got to show people the script,' he notes.

It has been pointed out in recent months that the UK is no longer as desirable a co-production partner as it was in the boom years of sale and leaseback. Loader, though, is not as downbeat as some UK producers about finding European partners.

'The (UK) tax credit is clearly working,' he says. 'It does work for co-productions, especially if you have a film that's doing a substantial proportion of its work in the UK. I don't think we're bringing nothing to the table.'

Free Range is already in talks with Tornasol about working on two future projects: Richard Kwietniowski's Regret Not Speaking (to which John Hurt is attached with a shoot likely in the UK and Spain) and a second de la Iglesia film, again to be shot in English.