Sam Lavender

Source: Java Road

Sam Lavender

UK-Asia production company Java Road has hired Sam Lavender as creative executive and executive producer.

Java Road is a partnership between Osborne, Nicholas Simon of Bangkok-based Indochina Productions and Mike Goodridge of UK-based Good Chaos.

Java Road launched earlier this year to adapt the works of novelist Lawrence Osborne. His credits include the novel on which Edward Berger’s Ballad Of A Small Player, produced by Good Chaos, is based. 

Lavender will work with Osborne and the team on films and series based on Osborne’s novels including Beautiful Animals and The Glass Kingdom, as well as short stories and original screenplays.

London-based Lavender was an executive and commissioner at Film4 and Channel 4 from 2006 to 2019. He then joined Motive Pictures where he developed and executive-produced six-part series The Woman In The Wall for BBC and Showtime.

Since 2024, he has worked as an independent producer and executive producer, and as an executive and consultant for Good Chaos and All Quiet On The Western Front producer Amusement Park.

His film credits as an executive producer include Rose Glass’s Saint Maud, Nick Rowland’s Calm With Horses, and Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer. 

“Aside from [Osborne’s] literary brilliance, his work is always an exciting prospect for adaptation: cinematic, deeply involving and grippingly told,” said Lavender. “This is going to be a special slate.”

Berger’s Ballad Of A Small Player, adapted from Osborne’s novel by Rowan Joffe, is currently on the festival circuit, having launched at Telluride, played at Toronto and San Sebastian, and had its UK premiere at BFI London Film Festival last week. Backed by Netflix, the film stars Colin Farrell, Faia Chen and Tilda Swinton, and will start streaming on the platform from October 29.

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