About
Festival Film & TV was founded in 1992 by independent
producer, Ray Marshall.
The company is best known for its successful Catherine Cookson mini series, which became a major ITV brand. In all, Festival produced 15 mini-series for ITV, based on the novels by best-selling author Dame Catherine Cookson.
This popular franchise not only attracted large audiences but also some of the cream of British acting talent including Catherine Zeta Jones, Robson Green, Sean Bean, Emily Mortimer, Nigel Havers, James Fox, Claire Skinner, Ray Stevenson, Emilia Fox, Janet McTeer, Art Malik, Bob Peck, Samantha Bond and many more.
More recently Festival produced the acclaimed one-off TV film for ITV, HALF BROKEN THINGS, a psychological thriller starring Penelope Wilton and Daniel Mays.
Festival has a slate of TV drama productions in development, including adaptations of Reginald Hill’s THE WOODCUTTER, Simon Kernick’s RELENTLESS and A MATTER OF BLOOD by Sarah Pinborough.
The company has a first look deal with 4DVD.
Festival has also recently re-launched its feature film arm FESTIVAL FILMS and is expanding its activities in this area. STAY WITH ME, set to shoot in late 2011, is a contemporary love story to be directed by Tim Fywell and starring Kaya Scodelario (Skins, Wuthering Heights) and Tom Hughes (Cemetery Junction, Sex and Drugs & Rock ‘n Roll). Other films in development include an adaptation of the novel THE POSSESSIONS OF DOCTOR FORREST by Richard T. Kelly and a psychological thriller, THE CHERISHED ONE.
Producer Matt Marshall is also developing a slate of horror films, the first of which is CRACKED, with a screenplay by Sarah Pinborough, which is slated for production in 2012.
Festival’s first feature film, MAN DANCIN’, was a contemporary thriller with a spiritual element, set in Glasgow’s gangland and starred Alex Ferns, Tom Georgeson, Kenneth Cranham and James Cosmo.