Latest in Element Pictures

In another mega M&A deal, Fremantle has taken a majority stake in Irish The Favourite, Room and Conversations with Friends producer Element Pictures. The company, one of the most prolific and respected on the European drama circuit, joins Fremantle’s roster of drama producers including The Responder indie Dancing…

Conversations With Friends and Normal People would have attracted a “tiny audience” if they had been made as features instead of TV shows, according to director Lenny Abrahamson, who said program-makers should trust audiences to enjoy “arthouse TV.” On the eve of BBC Three/Hulu’s Conversations With Friends’ release…

Ten years ago, on a drizzly Thursday evening during the much-loved Galway Film Fleadh, Element Pictures' Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe were standing outside of the Eyre Square Hotel when Guiney received an email with the initial pre-booking numbers for their upcoming title The Guard. The figures were, thankfully, "through…

Cast has been set on The Gallows Pole, Shane Meadows' first period TV drama. Starring are: Michael Socha (This is England), Thomas Turgoose (This is England), George MacKay (1917), Tom Burke (Mank), Sophie McShera (Cinderella), Cara Theobold (Downton Abbey), Yusra Warsama (Castle Rock), Eve Burley (Secret State)…

BritBox UK has commissioned comedy-drama series The Dry, produced by Normal People and The Favourite outfit Element Pictures in association with Screen Ireland and ITV Studios, and in partnership with RTÉ. Playwright and screenwriter Nancy Harris (The Good Karma Hospital) and director Paddy Breathnach (Viva) are…

Element Pictures, the production company behind Hulu and BBC drama Normal People, is ramping up its television activities with the hire of two executives. It has hired former Pulse Films exec Lucas Ochoa, who was Chief Creative Officer of its scripted division and Silverprint Pictures' Michael Dawson. They will be…

Hulu’s Normal People so powerfully details the heart-wrenching pain of first love, and the chemistry between its two lead actors is clearly electric. In fact, during auditions for the show, which follows the love story between bullied schoolgirl Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal), their first…

The BBC has moved quickly to cement its relationship with Irish author Sally Rooney. Youth channel BBC Three is preparing to drop Normal People in the spring, and is now committed to a 12-part adaption of Rooney’s debut book Conversations With Friends. Hulu is attached to Normal People, but has not yet signed up for Co…

The Favourite and The Room producer Element Pictures is bolstering its nascent TV division with the hire of former Channel 4 exec Jonny Richards as head of TV development, effective immediately. In the newly created role Richards will oversee Dublin and London-based Element Pictures' continued push into small screen…

EXCLUSIVE: The Favourite producer Element Pictures has set its next movie to go into production: the intimate, female-fronted drama Herself, which is set against the housing crisis. Element will produce with Catastrophe star and co-writer Sharon Horgan’s Merman. Set in Dublin, Herself is the story of young mother…

While Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite is nominated in 10 categories and up front in the Oscar race (matching Roma), there was a time, a long time actually, when it could not get financing. Partly due to its then-unfashionable period genre, but mostly because of its female-led story, its lack of major male roles and…

EXCLUSIVE: Fox Searchlight Pictures Presidents of Production for Film and Television Matthew Greenfield and David Greenbaum have set Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe’s Element Pictures to a first-look production deal for feature films. Deal comes as the duo’s latest film, the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed The Favourite, opens…