Producers Ed Barratt and Richard Wylie of newly formed UK company Public Pictures are at the Berlinale meeting with potential international partners and looking for new projects to add to their bustling slate of elevated genre film and TV projects.
The film development slate includes Rowan Athale’s In Her Shadow, a supernatural horror about a fractured family bond, sold by Bankside and produced alongside Tea Shop; Scapegoat, an adaptation of James Lasdun’s novel The Fall Guy, with Ed Wethered attached to write and Stigma Films also producing; and a thriller about a long-haul truck driver, Phantom, from writer-director Gerard Johnson. Most of the slate is budgeted around $5m.
Newcastle-based Baratt and London-based Wylie previously worked together at factual focused company Lorton Entertainment and are keen to also build an unscripted slate.
The company has received investment from a selection of high-net-worth individuals and have put some of this funding into a physical hub in central London, which they are covering the cost of for 18 months. A selection of fellow UK producers has access to the hub, with the aim of bolstering collaboration and opportunity. “I want to try and bring producers together,” said Wylie, a producer on Johnson’s 2019 thriller Muscle.
“There’s an altruism to it – a rising tide lifts all boats,” added Baratt, whose credits include AppleTV+ series Boom! Boom! The World Vs Boris Becker.
Companies in the Public Pictures collective include Tea Shop, Matthew James Wilkinson’s Stigma Films and Daisy Allsop’s Archface.
Future ambitions including setting up a senior debt production fund early next year and formalising a talent development offering in partnership with Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema.
For now, Wylie says they are particularly keen to find “good writing” at the Berlinale. “Novels to option, IP [intellectual property] and good spec scripts. Writers need to be paid properly, and we’re here to pay them properly.”
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