Nicholas Hytner’s The Choral headlined by Ralph Fiennes, Paul Andrew Williams’ The Nest starring Andrea Riseborough and Jan Komasa’s Jeremy Thomas-produced Good Boy are among the projects backed by the Yorkshire Content Fund and in production across the summer.
The Yorkshire Content Fund, administered by Screen Yorkshire, has been supporting local production since 2012. It was initially set up with funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), which was awarded through the now-defunct regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward.
Following the demise of the regional development agency structure in 2012, the Yorkshire Content Fund continued to support production in Yorkshire by recouping on previous investments. It has not received top-up funding since a second round of ERDF funding in 2014.
The fund does not therefore have a set annual allocation of funding, as it depends on the success of previous investments. Screen Yorkshire has declined to announce the level of investment in individual productions; in total, however, the fund has invested £24m, an average of £1.7m per year, with projects eligible for up to £500,000.
The Choral, written by Alan Bennett, is set in Yorkshire in 1916, where the chorus master and most of the men of the ambitious local choral society have volunteered for the front line of the First World War. The choral society recruits local teenagers, as the next generation contend with their imminent conscription.
Jim Broadbent and Simon Russell Beale also star, and Hytner is producing with Kevin Loader and Damian Jones. Shooting commenced in May.
Production is due to start shortly on Williams’ feature The Nest, which tells the story of two women who are neighbours and who strike up an unusual and questionable reliance on one another.
Good Boy, which Thomas is producing with Poland’s Ewa Piaskowska and Jerzy Skolimowski, follows a football hooligan as he is kidnapped by a middle-class family seemingly intent on reinventing him. The feature’s UK shoot took place in Leeds in July, with filming also taking place in Warsaw.
A fourth project to receive new investment is Reunion, a thriller TV series written by Sheffield-born deaf writer William Mager in which a deaf man is determined to unravel the truth behind the events that led him to prison. Matthew Gurney, Lara Peake, Anne-Marie Duff, Eddie Marsan, and Rose Ayling-Ellis star. Warp Films produces for the BBC, with filming ongoing in and around Sheffield.
Caroline Cooper Charles, chief executive of Screen Yorkshire, said: “Yorkshire is enjoying an incredible summer of filming activity, and we are delighted that the Yorkshire Content Fund has been instrumental in attracting four such high-profile projects to the region…. With a recent industry survey pointing to high levels of unemployment, we need to do everything we can to support our local workforce by attracting production to the region.
“These latest titles, along with the BBC series Virdee, which is also supported by the Content Fund and recently concluded production in Bradford, emphasise the important positive economic impact we can bring to the Yorkshire economy.”
Previous projects supported by the fund include films A Bunch Of Amateurs, The Duke, Dad’s Army and Ali & Ava and TV series All Creatures Great And Small, Peaky Blinders and Ackley Bridge.
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