UK producer Stephen Garrett to speak at SPAA Conference
The Screen Producers Association of Australia has announced British producer Stephen Garrett will speak at this year’s SPAA Conference.
Garrett is the chairman of Kudos Film & Television and executive chairman of Shine Pictures. Kudos produced Spooks, Hustle, Ashes to Ashes and The Hour as well as films Brighton Rock, and Eastern Promises.
The announcement:
The Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) has announced that Stephen Garrett, Chairman of Kudos Film & Television and Executive Chairman of Shine Pictures will speak at this year’s annual Conference which runs from 12 to 15 November at Central Pier, Docklands in Melbourne.
Garrett, who will be a Keynote Speaker, is one of Britain’s most valuable independent drama producers responsible for innovative, unusual and provocative programming and the man behind some of the UK’s most celebrated and award-winning TV drama.
Stephen began his career at Granada moving to Channel 4 as Commissioning Editor, Youth C4. He is renowned for his passion and support for new and exciting talent with a strong conviction that UK producers can create big, ambitious dramas.
Since founding it in 1992, and later with business partner Jane Featherstone, he has run Kudos, an independent production company that has distinguished itself with a host of popular award-winning quality scripted television and films, including The Hour, Spooks, Hustle, Ashes to Ashes, and Life on Mars to name just a few. This month sees the launch in the UK and US of Kudos’ latest drama series, the BBC/HBO co-production, Hunted, created by the X-Files’ Frank Spotnitz and starring Melissa George, on which Garrett was Executive Producer.
In 2004, Stephen invited former Film Four head Paul Webster to join him and Jane Featherstone as partners in a stand-alone filmmaking entity. The resulting venture was Kudos Pictures which has produced an array of acclaimed feature films including: Brighton Rock, adapted and directed by Rowan Joffe, and starring Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough and Helen Mirren as well as David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises (which Garrett executive produced), Bharat Nalluri’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (a Beaufoy screenplay and produced by Garrett), Disney’s first natural history feature documentary Crimson Wing, and the Beaufoy-penned Salmon Fishing in the Yemen starring Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt and Kristen Scott Thomas, directed by Lasse Hallstrom. He and his partner sold Kudos in 2006 becoming part of Elisabeth Murdoch’s Shine Group.
In 2011, Kudos Pictures formed a joint venture, Shine Pictures, headed up by Garrett and new Head of Film Ollie Madden, with Los Angeles-based New Regency (itself a joint venture with Fox) to develop and produce movies on a more global canvas with upcoming movies under that banner to include The Gray Man, to be directed by James Gray. In the latest of a long list of award-winning and acclaimed television productions, We’ll Take Manhattan, which tells the story of famed British photographer, David Bailey and his model and muse, Jean Shrimpton, has been nominated for best TV movie at the Prix Europa Awards 2012.
Outside Kudos, Garrett is a member of the British Screen Advisory Council. In 2010, he was the News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media at Oxford University, giving a series of lectures spanning the cusp of creativity and commerce and the future of story telling.
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