Writing is underway on the adaptation of Ben Fountain’s remarkable and multi-nominated novel, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk”.
It will be written by Oscar-winning screenwriter, Simon Beaufoy (“Slumdog Millionaire”, “127 Hours”, “The Full Monty”), who is once again teamed with his friends at Film4.
Set in Dallas in 2005, and described as “poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking”, the story follows infantryman Billy Lynn, a nineteen-year-old Texas native, and recounts the final few hours before he and his brothers-in-arms return to war in Iraq.
You fall in love with Billy and his buddies from the moment you step into their world. We cannot wait to bring them to life on screen.
Before founding The Ink Factory with his brother Stephen, Simon’s career spanned a combination of the commercial, the financial and the creative. Most recently, Simon was at top European venture capital firm Amadeus Capital Partners, one of six partners together investing over $750 million in high tech start-ups. At Amadeus, Simon focused across the media value chain, actively involved in taking several companies from inception to IPO and successful trade sale. Before that, Simon was founder and CEO of Two Way TV, an early pioneer of interactive television, BAFTA-nominated for its work in the field. Simon’s early career included stints at the Boston Consulting Group in the US, Granada in the UK, running refugee relief programmes for the UN in Thailand, and in Europe and New York with Titus Productions. Simon is a graduate of Oxford and Yale universities.
Stephen co-founded The Ink Factory in 2010 with his brother Simon. After working as an award winning photo-journalist, Stephen moved to California in the late 1980s to join the MA program at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema. His graduate film led to directing assignments on a couple of independent features and a TV movie for Showtime, before focusing on work as a screenwriter.In the last fifteen years Stephen has written for most of the major Hollywood studios, working with directors and producers including Ridley Scott, Guy Ritchie, Kathleen Kennedy, Joel Silver, Frank Marshall and Lorenzo di Bonaventura. With his writing partner Oliver Butcher, Stephen co-wrote last year’s ‘Unknown’ starring Liam Neeson. In addition to his work for The Ink Factory, he is currently writing ‘Gravel’, an adaptation of the Warren Ellis comic book, for Legendary Pictures.
Rhodri joined The Ink Factory at its inception after four years at The Weinstein Company, where he worked as Vice President, Production and Development. During his time there he was involved with productions as diverse as ‘The Reader’, ‘Shanghai’ and ‘Nowhere Boy’ and developed a slate of UK based scripts through the London office. His key success during his time at the company was the multi Academy Award winning film, ‘The King’s Speech’, which grossed almost $400m during its worldwide theatrical run. Prior to The Weinstein Company, Rhodri worked as a development executive and script editor at BBC Films, the film arm of the BBC.
Alexei joined The Ink Factory team after five years at Paramount Pictures International where he most recently ran their international co-production and acquisition activities. Overseeing local and English language films across a number of territories Alexei was involved with the production and acquisition of a wide range of box office hits including Cell 211, Tomorrow When The War Began, Made In Dagenham, Russian Disco and a Japanese language remake of Ghost. Prior to Paramount, Alexei was Commercial Manager at BBC Films where he was involved in the co-production and financing of over 30 titles including Shooting Dogs, The History Boys, My Summer of Love and The Cry Of The Owl.
Stephen Kirk is Chairman of The Ink Factory. Stephen tells us he is honored to be chairing The Ink Factory’s board, as he shares the company’s values, but we feel lucky to be working with someone with such a wealth of experience. He has 20 years experience of founding, managing and exiting a succession of companies in media and telecoms industries, including bidding for and winning cable franchises for 5 London boroughs (Cable London), pioneering interactive TV (Broadsystem) and providing the idea and initial technology for Skytalk. More recently, Stephen was asked to act as a Non-Executive Director at Shine Group, which he did until it was sold in 2011.
Ashley sits on our board, and has a great deal of experience in the media and finance sectors. She has worked in media for most of her career, initially in business development for Maxwell Entertainment Group and then launching thematic television channels for United International Holdings, a large global cable operator. She has also produced television documentaries for the BBC and worked as a production executive and script editor for Sky Pictures and RPTA. She has also worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Salomon Brothers. Most recently she has published a memoir, ‘Farangi Girl’. She has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Bryn Mawr College. She lives in London with her family.
We love stories.
We are dedicated to characters and narratives that are original, exciting and entertaining. We work with writers, storytellers and filmmakers who inspire us – and who, like us, want to challenge, stimulate and innovate.
We want to entertain, but also provoke and inspire. Each of us at The Ink Factory shares the fundamental conviction that our audience is both demanding and deserving. We are determined to live by that conviction with everything that we make.
We work with writers, storytellers and filmmakers who inspire us and who, like us, want to challenge, stimulate and innovate
We at the Ink Factory know that it doesn’t always matter where the ideas come from, or exactly what genre they are. What’s important to us is that those ideas excite, challenge and speak to us in the same way we believe they will reach, excite and speak to our audience.
Filmmaking is a team effort, and we strongly believe in collaboration. We are currently working with terrific talent from around the world – some with projects they have brought to us, some on projects developed from our own ideas, and others that are adapted from books and material we love.
One of those collaborators is the author, John le Carré. Our company has a unique association with the writer and his work. Over a fifty-year career, le Carré has consistently achieved the twin goals that we strive for: his work reaches a wide audience while remaining uncompromising – in its values, its artistic intent and its narrative technique. We are proud to be producing a number of films and television dramas based on his work, and his artistic imprint can be seen in other areas of our activity.
The outbreak tore the USA in two. The east remains a safe haven. The west has become a ravaged wilderness, known by survivors as the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead and delivers peace.
Now Homeland Security wants Marco for a mission unlike any other. He must return to California, where the outbreak began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again.
In the wastelands of America, you never know who — or what — is watching you.
This is a book we learned about after it had been discovered by a young editor at Hodder and Stoughton, who herself had spotted it being published chapter by chapter online, where it gained a cult following of passionate fans.
It’s an exceptional book, which is very much in a genre tradition but from a writer who has invented a completely original character. We believe there is the potential here for a film that is faithful to its roots, but at the same time builds on this uniqueness to create a fascinating story that reaches beyond the confines of the genre. We are thrilled to be working with the author to bring this book to the screen.
“A hair-raising quest … Zito expertly piles on thrills, cliffhangers and numerous twists …” – The Guardian
From first page to last, ‘The Return Man’ is an astonishing read. With characters you genuinely give a damn about and a story that’ll keep you turning page after page, this is an outstanding debut.’ – David Moody, author of ‘Autumn
How far would you go to keep a secret?
Nathan has never been able to forget the worst night of his life: a party that led to the sudden, shocking death of a young woman. Only he and Bob, an old acquaintance, know what really happened and they have resolved to keep it that way. But one rainy night, years later, Bob appears at Nathan’s door with terrifying news, and old wounds are suddenly reopened, threatening to tear Nathan’s whole world apart. Because Nathan has his own secrets now. Secrets that could destroy everything he has fought to build. And maybe Bob doesn’t realise just how far Nathan will go to protect them . . .
Neil Cross is the master of darkness behind the hit television show, ‘Luther’ (starring the remarkable Idris Elba) and writer of a number of thrilling, morally complex novels. He has an unnerving knack for putting his protagonist in agonizingly difficult positions, as well as asking the audience the question, ‘what would you do?’. If Alfred Hitchcock and Patricia Highsmith had a child, it would write like Neil.
A US military Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has been staging illegal, top secret high-intensity war games on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. Two days ago they lost all contact with everyone on the island. Emergency satellite imaging indicates that the games may have become real. JSOC has assembled a unit of twenty men to get onto the island and find out what happened. The unit designation is Chalk One. This is their story.
We at The Ink Factory love intelligent genre films. We love the way they entertain and also what they say about the zeitgeist of the time in which they are made. When they work they are a mainline to current fears, anxieties and the political environment. Think of the way films like ‘Detour’, ‘Aliens’ or ‘The Blair Witch Project’ are indelibly linked to their time.
But we also like scaring the hell out of people! ‘Chalk One’ will be a film that will feel like Neill Blomkamp, a young John Carpenter and a young James Cameron got together to make a horror film. We look forward to surprising and scaring you.
As reported in Variety, The Ink Factory has teamed up with Vin Diesel and Samantha Vincent’s One Race Productions to develop a major new action-thriller based on an original idea by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell. We are keeping the details under wraps for now, but Vin Diesel will star in a film that takes place in the US.
This will be a high concept, intelligent thriller that taps in very strongly to a lot of our current fears and the radical advancement in smart technology. We are excited to bring it to the screen as we think it will surprise people as well as entertain.
Butcher and Cornwell are currently writing the Warren Ellis graphic novel adaption, ‘Gravel’, to be directed by VFX wiz Tim Miller (whose work you will have seen if you have watched the opening credits for ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’) for Legendary Entertainment.
Jacob King arrives in Los Angeles looking for his missing younger sister. A stranger in a strange land, he has $400 in his pocket and a return ticket home in seven days. Within twenty-four hours Jacob King knows his sister is dead. This is the story of what happens in the next six days.
We are inspired by the great thrillers of the late 1960s and 1970s; films like ‘Point Blank’, ‘The French Connection’ and the work of Paul Schrader. These films are entertaining, taught and uncompromising, and explore the darkness at the heart of their protagonists. ‘Message From The King’ is a conflicted love letter to their adopted city, written by two outsiders in a strange land.
A lyrical, candid and ultimately tragic adolescent coming-of-age story of two teenage American sisters in Hong Kong in the early 1970s, set against the high-tension backdrop of the Cultural Revolution in China and on-going war in Vietnam.
This is a stunning book, which takes on complex ideas and themes with an incredible sense of economy. We loved the way the haunting story of two lost girls was interspersed with impressions of the heightened political backdrop, which still resonates decades on.
Read the New York Times book review here.
A young English couple bond with an enigmatic Russian businessman after a chance encounter on holiday. What they don’t know is that he is a gangster, seeking to defect to the British secret service before his rivals have a chance to murder him, and he has chosen them as his lifeline. The couple’s recruitment is followed by a deadly chase, which takes them from the souks of Marrakech to London, to the French Open Final in Paris and finally to a thrilling climax in the Swiss Alps.
With a screenplay by Hossein Amini (‘Drive’), this is an explosive, visceral adaptation of the latest book by John le Carré. With two young protagonists at its core, the audience will be able to connect with story in a very contemporary and real way, while the character of Dima, the Russian gangster, is simply extraordinary. We are thrilled to be working once again with our friends at Potboiler Productions and Film4.
Present day Hamburg, Germany: a mysterious, tortured and near-dead half-Chechen, half-Russian man on the run arrives in the city’s Islamic community desperate for help and looking to recover his late Russian father’s ill-gotten fortune. Nothing about this young man seems to add up; is he a victim or a thief or, worse still, an extremist intent on destruction? Drawn into this web of intrigue is a British private banker and a young female lawyer (McAdams) determined to defend the defenseless. All the while, they are being watched by the brilliant, roguish chief of a covert German spy unit (Hoffman), who fights to put the pieces together as the clock ticks.
We are immensely proud of this film, which will be the first production from The Ink Factory, with Gail Egan and Andrea Calderwood of Potboiler Productions, and Malte Grunert of Amusement Park. Andrew Bovell (‘Lantana’) has taken a tense and deeply moving novel by John le Carré and has crafted a beautifully layered, involving thriller.
In the hands of director Anton Corbijn (‘Control’, ‘The American’) this will be stylish, real and hugely intriguing. We are delighted to be able to bring his unique vision to the screen.
73 Wells Street, London W1T 3QG, +44 207 096 1698
13400 Ventura Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 91423, +1 310 721 5409
info@inkfactoryfilms.com
RT: A MOST WANTED MAN's Willem Dafoe: 'Don't make this into a crackpot profile, please' http://t.co/6rWEPWVS6Z via @guardian
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