Our first project with Giant Squid is on its way. As the teaser shows, it’s shaping up to be another groundbreaking work of art from Matt Nava, the creative force behind the look and feel of JOURNEY, Sony’s fastest selling downloadable title.
Set in a mesmerizing underwater world, ABZÛ will take players on an epic adventure into the depths of the sea, where they will encounter majestic creatures and discover long lost secrets. With Ab meaning ‘ocean’ and Zû meaning ‘to know’, the game takes its name from the Ancient Mesopotamian word for a mythical Ocean of Wisdom. As our first venture into interactive entertainment, we are thrilled about how the game is testing, and very excited to see where it will lead.
ABZÛ is scheduled for a 2016 release. For more information on Giant Squid and their partnership with The Ink Factory, please visit: www.giantsquidstudios.com
For more information on ABZÛ please visit www.abzugame.com
Hanns Alexander was the son of a prosperous German family who fled Berlin for London in the 1930s. Rudolf Höss was a farmer and soldier who became the Kommandant of Auschwitz and oversaw the deaths of over a million men, women and children.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. Lieutenant Hanns Alexander is one of the lead investigators; Rudolf Höss his most elusive target.
Moving from the Middle-Eastern campaigns of the First World War to bohemian Berlin in the 1920s, to the extreme horror of the concentration camps and the trials in Belsen and Nuremberg, it tells the story of two German men whose lives diverged, and then intersected, in an astonishing way.
Written by Hanns’ great-nephew Thomas Harding, Hanns and Rudolf is a meticulously researched, deeply personal account of these two lives. Beginning with their starkly different upbringings, it records their separate paths through the darkest period in modern history. When Hanns’ successful work for the War Crimes Investigation Team earns him the license to pursue individual targets, he begins his search across country for the highest-ranking Nazis, culminating in his hunt for Rudolph, perhaps the greatest mass murderer that history has ever seen.
Thomas Harding’s straightforward description of the facts, from the viewpoint of the two men’s perspectives, makes for an essential history and a deeply compelling narrative.
The screenplay will be written by Sir Ronald Harwood, the Oscar-winning writer of The Pianist. The clarity of Sir Ronald’s writing, conveying events and behaviour with economy and simplicity, is the perfect complement to Harding’s atttention to detail and his uncompromising journey into the deepest corners of human motivation and behaviour.
For more information on the astonishing biography, please see the book’s website: hannsandrudolf.com
In the shadowy recesses of Whitehall and Washington an unholy alliance operates between the intelligence community and the secret arms trade. Jonathan Pine is ready to stand up and be counted in the fight against this ultimate heart of darkness.
To infiltrate the inner circle of a lethal and amoral gangster, Pine must himself become a criminal.
THE NIGHT MANAGER is post-Cold War le Carré at its finest and one of his most beloved books. A fusion of spy story and tale of organised crime, it’s a book that is both hugely exciting and frighteningly plausible.
A covert counter-terror operation is mounted on the Rock of Gibraltar. Our boys on land, the American mercenaries by sea. This one is right off the books. Kit Probyn, upstanding Foreign Office veteran with no previous experience of the dark arts, is to be the Minister’s eyes and ears on the ground. His “red telephone”.
Toby Bell, rising Foreign Office star and the Minister’s Personal Private Secretary, has been kept out of the loop. Why? Whispers of private armies, bounty, dicey intelligence, corporate wars.
Three years on, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead and the worlds of Toby Bell and Kit Probyn collide. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, at what point do these two good men become guilty bystanders?
Hailed as the masterpiece to which le Carré had been building since the fall of Communism, this thrilling tale of loyalty, betrayal, and international espionage spans the lives of two friends, and their lethal involvement in clandestine activities over a thirty year period. From the riot-torn West Berlin of the 1970s, through the grimy looking-glass of Cold War Europe, to the present day of terrorism, ABSOLUTE FRIENDS is both penetrating character study and historical tour de force.
We will soon be announcing the screenwriter for this landmark drama.
Work is underway on the adaptation of “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” which is being directed by Ang Lee from a script by Simon Beaufoy, and is now in post-production.
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 2011’s Unknown starring Liam Neeson and Gravel, an adaptation of the Warren Ellis comic book.
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, Made In Dagenham, and Russian Disco. 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, Match Point, My Summer of Love and The Cry Of The Owl.
Charlie joined The Ink Factory with many years of entertainment industry experience: he was co-founder and CFO at Contender Entertainment, which he helped build organically and by acquisition. Contender distributed TV shows Spooks, Farscape and Art Attack, and co-created the BAFTA award-winning and multi-territory hit character brand Peppa Pig. After managing Contender’s sale to Entertainment One in 2007, Charlie stayed on as COO to oversee the continued rapid growth in the UK business, including the release of the Twilight Saga film franchise. Charlie trained as a Chartered Accountant with PwC in London.
Benjamin joined The Ink Factory as Director of Development after three years at HBO where he worked on such series as Game of Thrones, True Detective, The Leftovers, and Boardwalk Empire. Prior to HBO, Benjamin worked in feature development at Scott Free Productions during the production of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, and started his career at DreamWorks Studios where he worked for Steven Spielberg. Benjamin is a graduate of Boston University’s School of Management.
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 five 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.
The Ink Factory is a film, television and digital production company based in London and Los Angeles, founded in 2010 by Stephen Cornwell and his brother Simon.
We believe in reaching a wide audience by telling original and
exciting stories, working with storytellers and filmmakers who
inspire, challenge and innovate.
One of our collaborators is the author John le Carré, with whom the company has a close relationship. The company is working on a number of film and television adaptations of his work.
The company’s first film, A MOST WANTED MAN, based on the novel by John le Carré, was released in 2014. Forthcoming projects for The Ink Factory include OUR KIND OF TRAITOR, also based on the le Carré novel; BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK, directed by Ang Lee and based on the award winning novel by Ben Fountain, and MESSAGE FROM THE KING, by Stephen Cornwell and Oliver Butcher. The Ink Factory also has THE NIGHT MANAGER, a
television event series directed by Susanne Bier starring Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston. This co-production with AMC and BBC is due for release early next year.
The Ink Factory has also partnered with one of the games industry’s top talents, Matt Nava, to found digital studio Giant Squid. Giant Squid’s first game, ABZU, will be released in 2016.
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 most recently wrote 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 $600 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, taut 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.
When Perry (Ewan McGregor) and his wife, Gail (Naomie Harris), cross paths with the charismatic Dima (Stellan Skarsgård) on their Moroccan holiday, the forceful Russian is quick to challenge Perry to a friendly game of tennis. But this innocuous contest is not all it seems – Dima is a long-time servant of the Russian mafia, whose new boss, ‘The Prince’, wants him and his family dead. His only hope is to befriend the unsuspecting Perry and ask him to broker his sanctuary with the British intelligence services, in return for exposing a vein of corruption that runs right to the heart of the City of London.
Perry and Gail soon find themselves on a terrifying journey through Paris to a safe house in the Alps and, with the might of the Russian mafia closing in, they begin to realise this particular match has the highest stakes of all…
Directed by Susanna White (‘Generation Kill’) with a screenplay by Hossein Amini (‘Drive’), this is an explosive, visceral adaptation of the 2010 book by John le Carré. We are thrilled to be working once again with Potboiler Productions and Film4, and to be joined on this project for the first time by our friends at Studiocanal.
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 is 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.
Philip Seymour Hoffman commands the film in a breathtaking central performance. “The Bachmann character and Philip, I couldn’t distinguish at some point,” says director Anton Corbijn. “You so believed in that character as a real person that you couldn’t believe it was somebody acting that. He is that good. I don’t have to tell you that he was the best actor of his generation, by far.” It was to be his last completed performance before his tragic death in February this year.
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Olivia Colman pictured in BBC's adaptation of John le Carre novel The Night Manager | via @Telegraph https://t.co/sImkN69Qzw
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