Fani Ntaveloubaum, Callum Grant

Source: Anton

Fani Ntavelou-Baum, Callum Grant

UK production, financing and sales outfit Anton has created a development fund aimed at female-identifying and non-binary screenwriters working in the action genre.

Successful applicants will receive development funding and collaborate closely with Anton founder and CEO Sebastien Raybaud, a producer on Greenland, The End We Start From, Canary Black and Cleaner; producer Callum Grant, whose credits include Jackdaw and Cleaner; and the programme’s lead creative executive Fani Ntavelou-Baum, executive producer of The End We Start From.

Anton will also package, sell and finance a select few of the productions.

The company said there is no defined limit as to how many projects will be selected for the fund, or what the financial scope of the fund will be. 

“I have been tracking action-driven material in the UK and Europe for over 10 years now and it has been consistently difficult to find original work generated by women. That is crazy, given the enormous appetite for these films globally and the size of their female audience,” said Grant, with the action genre accounting for more than half of global box office takings.

“My sense is many female writers understand the genre deeply but simply lack the opportunities to explore it. We hope this initiative can go some way to changing that and provide a home for a new wave of action cinema.”

“We’re delighted to be launching this initiative – there’s a real opportunity for female-identifying and non-binary screenwriters to claim their space in the action genre,” noted Ntavelou-Baum. “By addressing this gap in representation, we aspire to contribute to the evolution of storytelling within action.”

Anton’s credits in the action genre include the Greenland franchise and upcoming films CleanerBreakout and Canary Black.