Producer Matthew James Wilkinson of Stigma Films is attending Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) with the UK premiere of The Score, just one of several projects on his growing slate.
Wilkinson has just wrapped the shoot for T.I.M., Spencer Brown’s contained ‘monster-in-the-house thriller’ which Altitude has pre-sold to a number of territories including the UK.
The cast for the sci-fi, AI-themed thriller features Black Mirror star Georgina Campbell. The film wrapped its shoot in and around London in late July. “It’s a brilliant commercial idea and a well written script,” says Wilkinson. “For a while I’d wanted to find an adult thriller that harkened back to The Hand that Rocks The Cradle or Sleeping With The Enemy. It’s a twist on those kinds of movie I loved as a kid.”
The film slate at Stigma also includes Romola Garai’s second feature, Monstrous Beauty, out to cast and sales companies now, to shoot in 2023. “It’s an ambitious period drama with a twist,” Wilkinson adds of the project, a feminist story set in the court of King Charles II.
Jonas Akerlund’s A Book For Burning is at a similar stage, talking to cast and sales companies now. That film is “a hedonistic romp through 1920s Paris and London,” about a fighter pilot who falls in love with a woman who is an acolyte of occultist Aleister Crowley. Partners are now lining up for Gerard Johnson’s Phantom, a serial killer thriller set on the west coast of America, produced with Hook Pictures.
Stigma is also now moving into television, working with Kudos on Steve Knight’s Two Tone for BBC One, casting now; developing a football comedy for Sky Studios with Caleb Ranson adapting the book Six Stickers. And in early development – with writers being discussed now – is the Iain Banks adaptation The Business, which Wilkinson describes as “Killing Eve meets The Night Manager, about a female executive in the world of corporate espionage. It has lots of dry wit.”
To handle the volume of productions at Stigma, Wilkinson brought on Patrick Tolan as another in-house producer at the company in 2021, and plans to hire a head of operations later this year, a production executive in 2023 and also a part-time staffer to run the TV side.
“We did six films in the pandemic and are busier than ever, of course there has been a production boom all around the UK,” says Wilkinson.
The company’s growth allows them to move beyond the lower-budget, high-concept genre films the company started with – like Romola Garai’s Amulet and Gerard Johnson’s Muscle. “We always wanted to be working with intelligent filmmakers,” Wilkinson said. “Now we have the ability to do those second and third features with a more ambitous scale and more high profile cast to hopefully reach bigger audiences.” Of course Stigma also moved into the big leagues as one of the producers of Danny Boyle’s Yesterday.
Upcoming launches
The Score, a musical thriller/romance directed by Malachi Smyth and starring Will Poulter, Naomi Ackie and Johnny Flynn, is having its UK premiere at this year’s EIFF, after previously launching in Tallinn. Republic will release the film in September in the UK (WestEnd handles sales).
Smyth has also written the script for Sentinel, directed by Tanel Toom and now in post, produced by Ben Pullen, Pippa Cross and Wilkinson and sold by Altitude.
Also coming up for Stigma is Ben Parker’s WWII thriller Burial, confirmed for Frightfest and sold by Altitude with 101 Films distributing in UK.
Seize Them!, a female-led comedy set in dark ages Britain, is also in post now, with Entertainment Film Distributors planning a 2023 UK release. The cast features Aimee Lou Wood, Nicola Coughlan, Lolly Adefope, Nick Frost and Jessica Hynes. Curtis Vowell directs from Andy Riley’s script, and Wilkinson produces alongside Damian Jones.
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