Fifth Season is increasing its U.Ok. manufacturing footprint via the acquisition of The Story Collective.
Launched in 2021 with Fifth Season’s backing by Damian Keogh, Simon Vaughan, Helen Jackson and Jonathan Norman, the UK-based movie and TV studio is behind the Stephen Graham-led “A Thousand Blows,” which is created by Steven Knight for Disney+/Hulu and launched its second season on Jan. 9.
The Story Collective’s forthcoming initiatives, which is able to now sit underneath Fifth Season’s U.Ok. studio arm, embody reveals in improvement at Apple, BBC, Sky, Netflix, Channel 4, Britbox and Sky Showtime. It additionally boasts artistic partnerships with Tom Davis and James de Frond’s Mighty Pebble Footage and Ben Donald’s Cosmopolitan Footage.
In the meantime, Fifth Season’s present UK manufacturing slate consists of work in improvement with Netflix, Sky, Channel 4, Starz, and Prime Video. The studio’s notable credit embody sequence resembling “Severance,” “His & Hers,” “9 Excellent Strangers,” “Tokyo Vice,” “Omnivore” and movies like “Guide Membership,” “The Misplaced Daughter,” “Nonnas” and “Friendship.”
Keogh, who will stay CEO of The Story Collective, will be part of Fifth Season as its senior vice chairman and managing director of worldwide scripted. He’ll work in a strategic capability throughout a variety of worldwide initiatives from Fifth Season’s TV studio and distribution divisions.
In the meantime, Ben Irving will proceed to guide Fifth Season’s U.Ok. improvement and manufacturing slate as SVP and inventive director of worldwide scripted. The pair will work carefully collectively on persevering with to construct the studio’s U.Ok. and worldwide manufacturing actions.
A consolidated senior management staff — together with The Story Collective’s Elouise West and Natasha Neill and Fifth Season’s Charlotte Bloxham — will now collaborate throughout each slates, main on enterprise affairs, finance and manufacturing, respectively, from Fifth Season’s London workplace.Keogh and Irving each report back to Fifth Season CEO Graham Taylor.
“The Story Collective was constructed by Damian, Simon, and Helen on an ethos of artistic collaboration, which we backed and have admired from its inception – and it looks like a pure evolution to be consolidating on this method 4 years later, as we double down on our ambitions as a UK studio,” Taylor mentioned in a press release. Fifth Season’s providing now has even higher firepower, and an plain nexus of expertise connections and initiatives to place our weight behind.”
“We set the corporate as much as companion with nice artistic expertise and producers wholeheartedly and with a affected person, nurturing, and supportive ethos. We actually imagine within the staff sport of all of it and are pleased with the roster of individuals and initiatives we’ve got assembled in our Collective,” Keogh added. “Fifth Season has at all times recognised and inspired our method, and it’s a pure and thrilling subsequent step to be becoming a member of forces, and I’m trying ahead to working extra carefully with Graham, Ben, and different Fifth Season colleagues.”
As a part of the sale, Vaughan is exiting to begin a brand new artistic content material studio referred to as Storyworks, the place he and his staff will construct profile scripted productions from LA and London.
Storyworks can have a first-look cope with Fifth Season and work alongside The Story Collective on sure pre-existing initiatives.
“It’s thrilling to see The Story Collective being consolidated inside Fifth Season to assist ship the scaled enterprise all of us got down to construct collectively after we fashioned the corporate 4 years in the past,” Vaughan mentioned. “And likewise thrilling for my new enterprise to be partnering with Fifth Season from the off – the initiatives on our mixed slates going ahead are really extraordinary and I sense that the very best is but to come back.”
