It has been a fruitful year for Brouhaha Entertainment. The London and Sydney-based production outfit has produced five features and a TV series, and the team attended the Berlinale with two dramas in the works, both with an A-list cast attached and already garnering attention. So have they slept in the last 12 months? “It’s pretty crazy,” said company co-founder Gabrielle Tana, laughing.
The self-styled “lean and mean team” was founded by UK-based Tana – who began her career at The Gate cinema in London before going on to produce the likes of Philomena, The Invisible Woman and Dig — with Australian Troy Lum, founder of distributor Hopscotch Features, and his fellow Hopscotch partner/producer and The Matrix executive producer Andrew Mason.
Tana and Lum hit it off after distributing Hopscotch The Invisible Woman and Philomena in Australia. They started partnering when Lum started producing, five years ago. The Brouhaha joint venture was officially born in the summer of 2021 with support from the Calculus Creative Content EIS fund, launched by the British Film Institute in 2019 to support the growth of independent production companies.
The outfit does not plan to continue producing at such a pace – which Lum has put in a “bottle-necking” of projects since the pandemic subsided – but intends to stick to two or three parts or series in a year.
There is no specific recipe for the Brouhaha project. The titles are from Brazilian Karim Aïnouz’s English-language debut Firebranda bloody psychological horror set in the Tudor court that is in post-production, into the 1980s coming-of-age series Swallowed by the Infant Universe, set in a working-class Australian neighborhood, is set to be released on Netflix this year.
There is also The Convert, an action feature co-produced by Auckland-based Jump Film and Television and headlined by Guy Pearce, is about a lay preacher who arrives in a British settlement in 1830s New Zealand and is caught between of warring Maori tribes. UK outfit Mister Smith Entertainment is representing the sales, with the company eyeing an autumn premiere.
Other upcoming features include a drama about influential US writer and activist Susan Sontag, starring Kristen Stewart, plus Anton Corbijn. bEhinDstarring Helen Mirren as author Patricia Highsmith, with FilmNation launching sales at the European Film Market.
There are also several TV series on the simmer. In progress is Love And Virtue, based on a novel by Australian author Diana Reid, with Kate Dennis attached as director. And it picked two more Australian books – The Weekend by Charlotte Wood, adapted for the UK, and by Craig Silvey bees.
“We’re shifting a lot of emphasis to the television segment,” Lum said. “Not neglecting what we do in independent film, that’s our heartbeat, but some of the stories we want to tell naturally fit into a longer format.”
Being spread across two continents allows the independent outfit to make use of the best of both countries. “The UK has incredible talent in writing and directing,” Lum said. “One of the things the pandemic has done is bring a lot of talent back to Australia and want to work in Australia. We’ve brought streamers into the market and there’s serious talk about the government bringing in a quota system for local content. It feels alive and like a new way of doing things.
Growing team
In addition to the founders, the team consists of four other staff members who work throughout development and post-production. Producer Carolyn Marks Blackwood is also often associated with Brouhaha. There are plans to make more hires, but nothing to expand sales or distribution. “We don’t have time, marketing is not our specialty and there are a lot of people who already do,” Lum said.
Producers have had positive experiences working with Netflix but agree that financial incentives should be available for the transformation of a hit. “[Streaming] is to keep things alive, but there needs to be some recalibration,” Tana said. “Today there are many platforms, which can make a difference. Netflix is the only one – with so much competition it will be interesting to see how it plays out. If a title does well, it should be rewarded. “
Financing, not surprisingly, remains the biggest headache. “It’s always like reinventing the wheel,” Tana said. The two bEhinD and the Sontag project was not yet fully funded.
“If you think hard about how to do it, then you yourself will make a corner that is impossible,” said Lum. “Every project, at some point, feels impossible. The true art of making is making the impossible, possible. That’s what we do.”
