UK’s David Parfitt unveils new project with French partner ‘The Father’ and near future ‘Hamlet’; Call US agents

Oscar- and BAFTA-winning filmmaker David Parfitt hopes to reunite with French producer Philippe Carcassonne following their successful collaboration on Florian Zeller’s Oscar-winning drama The father.

Parfitt revealed his plans during a masterclass at the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra Talent Incubator event on Sunday.

“He [Carcassonne] is developing something very interesting based on an Israeli novel called achewhich he commissioned as a French script, but they decided to do it in English in England,” Parfitt explained after the call.

Zeruya Shalev’s 2019 novel centers around a woman looking back on the double trauma of being caught up in a terrorist attack and being abandoned by a lover when he re-enters her life ten years later.

Carcassonne’s partner, actress and director Anne Fontaine, whose credits include Coconut for Chanelis committed to directing the film, which would be her first English-language production.

“Philippe said: ‘Let’s see if we can make it work’. It’s early days, we don’t have an English script yet,” he said.

Parfitt originally came on board The father about the theater maker Simon Friend, who introduced him to the producers Carcassonne and Jean-Louis Livi.

Friend directed a theater production The wipers for Parfitt and produced the West End theater version of Zeller’s original play for The father.

“Even though it was originally a Parisian story, they decided to write it in English and play it in London. We helped fill the gaps. They had already reached out to Anthony Hopkins and he made himself available and stuck with the project for a long time, but we introduced the rest of the cast,” Parfitt said in the masterclass.

But Zeller was an established theater director in France The father was his first feature film. Parfitt had experience working with new filmmakers from his early films with Kenneth Branagh and later Nicholas Hytner. The Madness of King George.

“Because it was his first time directing, the big challenge for us was to get a fantastic team around him,” added Parfitt. My week with Marilyn Cinematographer Ben Smithard and Production Designer Peter Francis.

Parfitt revealed that his company Trademark Films is also in early development on a futuristic adaptation of hamlet called Hamlet from Prince of Wales.

“There is still a long way to go, but it is one hamlet playing in England in the near future,” he said. “I’m not going to call it dystopian because it always sounds so clichéd. The idea is that democracy has collapsed and the monarchy has taken over ours again hamlet based on that.”

“There is nothing to announce yet. There is no casting, no funding. We are currently developing the script,” he added. “As we start to move toward casting, we’ll probably try to announce in late summer if we’re moving in the right direction.”

The producer revealed there is a director in the picture, but teased “it’s someone with ties to the theatre.”

Recently completed films on Parfitt’s list include those by British director George Jaques Black dogwhere he is executive producer.

The story follows two London teenagers from different backgrounds who move to the north of England and discover that they have more in common than they initially thought.

Jamie flatters (Avatar: The Way of Waterr) co-stars with other leads, including Keenan Munn-Francis and Nicholas Pinnock, and also earns a co-writing credit.

“George Jaques and Jamie Flatters wrote this together, a bit like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, originally for themselves, although George quite rightly chose not to star in it and they shot it on a micro budget. They just finished and I think it’s pretty good.”

The film’s completion coincides with the recent announcement that Parfitt has been appointed chairman of the UK’s North East Film Committee.

“It’s pure coincidence. I signed up for this years ago. I was there like an executive producer, a godfather figure. I think they did very well.”

Sunday’s masterclass cast a wide net over Parfitt’s career. He spoke about his early collaboration with Branagh to found the Renaissance Theater Company and then working on feature films Henry V, Peter’s friends And Much ado about nothing together.

The conversation also touched on later highlights of the Oscar winner Shakespeare in love And The fatherwhich won the 2021 Oscars for Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins and Best Adapted Screenplay for Zeller and Christopher Hampton.

In response to a question about the policy of working with big names in the film industry, Parfitt said the most difficult part was the development and pre-production stages before the shoot, and his frustration with the American agents’ attitude towards that part of the movie further pronounced. . the process.

“What I’ve done a lot more in recent years is hide behind a casting director. I was pretty defensive about the casting process. In the past, we actually took our cast from the existing acting group and augmented it with friends. It was a family arrangement,” he said.

“I now have a regular customer [casting agent]. I will talk to her and she will advise me if it is the right time to go to a particular person. She will first sort out the agents and try to get an agent to read before we read a talent. If you get the agent’s support, it is much better. I’m talking about the London agents. Americans make me quite grumpy…

“I try to avoid American agents, which I consider the worst. I think they are the least creative people on earth. I’m trying to deal with it [people] in London and with Europeans who want to make films for the right reasons.”

Parfitt clarified that comment in a post-masterclass chat, explaining that it stems from his difficulties connecting with American agents to discuss potential talent additions for productions he’s getting off the ground.

When asked what he wanted from the big American agents, he replied, “I want them to really promote independent films by reading our scripts and taking our calls.”

“I would call every major agent in the UK and say, ‘I want to read it myself. If you, the agent, like it, offer it to your client. I will not make an offer because there is no financing, no money, I will use your client to raise the financing.

Parfitt said that while British agents will participate in this process, it is often impossible to get past the third assistant at a major LA talent agency without an “offer of money” to go along with it.

“The cops in America will say, ‘What’s the offer? They want a cash offer before they show it. I think they could do more to support truly independent films in the UK by actually passing things on to their customers without any financial offer.”