UK production company Drop Dead Films is ready to talk with buyers about Charlie Shaw’s Revenge, its latest feature to blend horror, thriller and action genres with a British flavour.
Written and directed by John Langridge, Charlie Shaw’s Revenge is set in a remote adventure park and circus on the brink of bankruptcy. It follows a group of workers preparing for its re-opening who find themselves stalked by a silent killer.
The cast is led by Cerys Knighton and James Payton, with Mark Benton and Bill Fellows, alongside professional circus performers or actors with circus training
“We were looking for either circus performers who could act or actors with circus training,” Pires explains. “We were lucky to find four actors for the roles that required circus skills: Amelie Leroy, Keri Martin, Molly Cattanach and Aaliyah-Monroe Pires.”
Langridge has also produced Charlie Shaw’s Revenge with Drop Dead Films’ co-owner and producing partner Renato Pires. Actor, screenwriter and producer Justin Hayward, whose credits include TV seriesThe Choir, also produces.
The film has been shot on location at the 65-acre Knockhatch Adventure Park and the East Sussex School of Circus Arts in East Sussex in the UK. Former circus artist and stage actor Pires founded the school in the spring of 2023 and brought his skills to the project, choreographing and training the performers in the film’s circus acts and stunts.
With most of the location-based film shooting outside at night, the production was “at the mercy of the dreaded British weather, which often played havoc with the schedule,” Langridge says.
“It rained every single day at least once, and then when we wrapped it didn’t rain for the next 25 days. Not once,” Langridge smiles.
Pires pays tribute to the ingenuity of the production crew led by director of photography Nathan Hubert, whose credits include Christian Anholt’s The Journey, and his team. “They were able to put together excellent lighting setups in sometimes very challenging conditions,” Pires says.
The finished film also boasts complex in-camera blood effects from make-up wizard Kate Griffiths.
Alive and kicking
Langridge and Pires set up Drop Dead Films in 2015 after meeting as they picked up and dropped off their children on the school run. Charlie Shaw’s Revenge is the company’s second feature after Langridge’s mystery horror 13 Graves, which was released in the UK by Evolutionary Films in 2019 before rolling out across digital platforms, including Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, and Microsoft Films in the US and UK in July of that year.
Drop Dead has also produced the fiction shorts Feminine Incite, Burned and the documentary short The Woman Who Whirls.
Langridge shot his first film, a short called Walking Shadows, in 2000. His feature debut, the dark comic thriller Four starring Martin Compston, Craig Conway, Sean Pertwee and Kierston Wareing, was produced by Oh My! Productions in 2011, and is streaming on Netflix in the UK.
Pires says this commercial and festival recognition for Langridge’s work is helping Drop Dead to move forward and reassures potential backers. Made for under $1m, Charlie Shaw’s Revenge was funded via private investors and the UK Independent Film Tax Credit (IFTC).
For his part, Pires handles the business side of Drop Dead, lending his circus chops now and again should the project require them. He has sealed a deal for Charlie Shaw’s Revenge to be distributed theatrically in Colombia via distributors The G Seven on 100-plus screens.
For the film’s first official festival selection, they have successfully secured the closing night of the Romford Horror International Film Festival: Horrhiffic; and as the opening-night film of Eastbourne’s Crossing The Screen event as part of the festival’s 10-year celebration.
Drop Dead Films is now hoping to shoot its third film, a road movie thriller called Hostage, in the UK later this year. It represents another step up for the company, with a budget of $3m.
“We have already secured 65% of the funding in soft money from a combination of the UK tax credit and a new venture from Hertfordshire Futures, which gives us access to the facilities at Elstree Studios,” says Pires. “With a casting director and some cast already attached, we’re now looking for pre-sales and equity funding to secure the rest.”
The company’s development slate also includes the creature horror Firelight, drone horror Autonomous and future-set family thriller Three Days, for which Drop Dead is now looking for co-production partners.
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