Following a Best Live Action Short Oscar win last year for writer-director Aneil Karia’s The Long Goodbye (co-written with Riz Ahmed), production company Somesuch is launching a film development and production arm headed up by Scott O’Donnell, a BAFTA-winning producer best known for his work on Surge (2020) and Home (2016). Kicking off the new venture is director Leo Leigh’s feature debut, Sweet Sue, backed by BBC Film, sold by HanWay and produced by O’Donnell.
Founded in 2010 by Sally Campbell and Tim Nash, Somesuch has a reputation for pushing boundaries in the worlds of short film, music videos, branded content and advertising. Having produced Oscar, BAFTA and BIFA-winning short film work over the past decade and representing the likes of directors Lynne Ramsey, Raine Allen-Miller and Tom Hardiman in the commercialmaking space, Somesuch is now carving out its own path in the feature film arena. In addition to Sweet Sue which was wrapped in 2022, Somesuch’s feature slate currently in development with BBC Film includes experimental filmmaker Beatrice Gibson’s debut and Leigh’s sophomore project.
Firmly established in commercial spaces, storytelling comes as standard to Somesuch projects–the new offering is an extension of past work, and a natural evolution of the existing infrastructure. In 2017, Somesuch picked up its first BAFTA for Daniel Mulloy’s Home and produced Crystal Moselle’s feature documentary Sophia for Showtime.
“Having produced award-winning narrative work for the past 12 years, the time feels right to continue Somesuch’s expansion into feature film. We will keep doing what we do best–bringing fresh and unconventional stories to the world, from the most exciting new filmmaking talent,” said Somesuch co-founder Nash.
O’Donnell added, “Somesuch has achieved phenomenal success with its short form output over the last 10 years, through the development and championing of directors with strong and interesting voices. By applying this same approach to feature films we aim to highlight new talent to the industry with films that offer unique and original perspectives.”
Maggie Smith, Star of Stage, Film and “Downton Abbey,” Dies At 89
Maggie Smith, the masterful, scene-stealing actor who won an Oscar for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" in 1969 and gained new fans in the 21st century as the dowager Countess of Grantham in "Downton Abbey" and Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, died Friday. She was 89. Smith's sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement that Smith died early Friday in a London hospital. "She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother," they said in a statement issued through publicist Clair Dobbs. Smith was frequently rated the preeminent British female performer of a generation that included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench, with a clutch of Academy Award nominations and a shelf full of acting trophies. She remained in demand even in her later years, despite her lament that "when you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything." Smith drily summarized her later roles as "a gallery of grotesques," including Professor McGonagall. Asked why she took the role, she quipped: "Harry Potter is my pension." Richard Eyre, who directed Smith in a television production of "Suddenly Last Summer," said she was "intellectually the smartest actress I've ever worked with. You have to get up very, very early in the morning to outwit Maggie Smith." "Jean Brodie," in which she played a dangerously charismatic Edinburgh schoolteacher, brought her the Academy Award for best actress, and the British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) as well in 1969. Smith added a supporting actress Oscar for "California Suite" in 1978, Golden Globes for "California Suite" and "Room with a View," and BAFTAs for lead actress in "A Private Function" in 1984, "A Room with a View" in... Read More