The Guinness Girl
A True Story
Feature Film
It is 1974 Maria (10) is the only non-white pupil in her Newcastle school. Her mother is
Irish, and her absent father is from Trinidad. Whilst this sets her apart from other kids,
Maria has up until now, been largely unaware of those differences. She is curious and
imaginative, finding the world around her fascinating, inspirational, and full of joy.
However, as her eleventh birthday approaches, Maria begins to notice changes in herself and the world around her.
She lives on her own with her mother Sheila, but most other kids live with their mum and
dad. Maria begins to ask questions about her dad, as she only has vague memories of him playing the saxophone, and cannot recall his face, but the questions make her mum cry. Something happened, something bad, Maria is determined to get to the bottom of it, if she can find her father perhaps, they can be a family again.
Last year her friend Julie became famous when she got in the papers for winning the
local Irish Feis (dance competition). If Maria can do the same, maybe she can become famous and get her photo in the paper… Perhaps then her dad will find her, she will know what happened, she’ll fix it and the family will be complete..
Status: In Development with Screen Ireland
Writer: Maria McAteer and Len Collin
Based on The Play by Maria McAteer
Sex & Drugs & Sausage Rolls
Sitcom developed with the Students of Northumbria University
Follows the lives of three young women working in a Newcastle High Street bakery.
Georgie, Jaz and Debs all look at life differently. Georgie works part time whilst at university, Jaz is looking to become a footballer's WAG, and Debs is in love with
Ratpisé the take away delivery guy, who because of his name, appearance and smell is commonly referred to as Ratpiss. Throw in a feckless but well meaning manager, "Greasy" Graham, a fantasist shop assistant Shelley who gets everything just slightly wrong, Jaz's beleaguered MMA boyfriend Mike, sub-manager Veronica who dreams of competing on Masterchef and a raft of celebrity look a likes and you have a recipe for fun, frangipane and frolics.
Status: In Development
Writer: Len Collin & the students of NU MI5002
Based on an idea by Len Collin
Flight of the Fancies
TV Series
It’s 1983 four Aer Lingus air stewardesses leave Ireland to join Royal Jordanian airlines. On the surface it seems like a simple move for sun sea and adventure. Mary (21) couldn’t even point to Jordan on a map. “It’s the Middle East… not so far over as the East”. Nuala (23) describes it as Jesus Country. Ciara (24) sees it as a chance to get out of Dublin away from her overcrowded family home. Siobhan (33) however wants to get away from her abusive husband (divorce being illegal in Ireland at the time) What awaits them in Jordan? Flight of the Fancies is a fictional story inspired by true events. It blends comedy, drama and nostalgia in a style redolent of dramas such as The Marvellous Mrs Maisel, The Americans and the Deutcschland ’83 series. A feel-good series that aims to show a positive view of Islamic culture in Jordan, the irresistible spirit of the Irish, 1980's fashion, 1980's music and a bygone world of air travel. It is a story of clashing cultures, having fun, falling in love, living a glamorous life, of travel, turbulence and sick bags.
Status: In Development
Writer: Len Collin
Pigs in Blankets
TV Series
Helen Coates, a middle-aged businesswoman, faces post-pandemic financial ruin, but when she inherits a pig farm in Ireland, from a brother she didn’t know existed, her life is changed forever.
Pigs in Blankets is an uplifting series that focuses on a woman who has to re-evaluate what is important in her life, in order to transform into the person, she wants to be.
Helen Coates (50s) has her own PR agency, Smile, in London. She has always considered herself to be a good person. She was a good wife, until her husband had an affair. A
good mother, but now her son has left the nest for university. A hardworking, moral and good employer, until Covid ripped a hole in her finances. Now she is hanging on by a thread, with clients deserting the company and her best employees leaving “a sinking ship”. She has always been a good friend, often supporting those in need with a ready
shoulder, or credit free loan. Her house has been on the market for a year, her love life is non-existent, and her former business partner and best friend Sue is in a home for Dementia patients. Helen finds herself lonely and isolated in one of the world’s busiest cities. then she gets a call from a solicitor in Ireland.
Status: In Development
Writer: Len Collin
Based on an idea by Michelle Collins
The Faery Wife
Feature Film
The Faery Wife explores the true story of Bridget Cleary who in rural Ireland 1898 was murdered by her husband Michael Cleary.
Steph Lloyd Jones has written an engaging and challenging script that looks at the events through a feminist lens. Bridget was more a woman of our times than a woman of the nineteenth century. An entrepreneur with her own business, her own dreams and desires, independent of her husband. When Michael suspects she's a 'changeling' he and her family turn to dark folklore, only too willing to join in - but who has really been touched by the fairies?
Developed with funding from Ffilm Cymru
Writer: Steph Lloyd Jones
Steph is an experienced writer and script editor. Her credits include: The Bill, River City, Red Rock, Doctors, Holby City and Eastenders.
Steph Lloyd Jones is represented by Cecily Ware Literary Agents
Iron Harvest
Feature
Set now and in 1917 this is the story of four young men separated by a century, who fell in love in the face of war and street violence. Based on the award winning play Box by Len Collin this big screen version adapts the story for today's audience. Mark is mixed race and on the run after a knife fight on the streets of London. He meets Ronan on a ferry to France and immediately sees him as a dupe after stealing his wallet. However, Ronan is less of a push over than Mark initially thinks and he ends up agreeing to travel with him.
They end up working on a Belgian farm for accommodation and food, their task is to dig a drainage ditch. But in amongst the "Iron Harvest" of spent munitions from the first world war, they discover a box that contains the relics of two soldiers, one English and one German. Through a diary they learn about the story of these two men who fell in love and deserted the war together. However there is also a rifle in the box, and Mark sees that has his passport out of trouble.
Status: In Development
Writer: Len Collin
Len says: "This is the work that launched my career as a writer, it has never left me as a story and I now want to bring it to the wider world as a film. Box was well received as a play and the characters of Marcus and Gavin as they then were, are based on people I knew and grew up with. I understood violence as a young man, and Toxic masculinity, which wasn't a phrase used back then. It's an important story that can find a new and appreciative audience in the LGBTQ community and beyond."
THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN COOL AND THE GROOVY GANG
TV Series
Part of our Emerging Talents strand
When a series of mysterious asteroids strike the town of Bramsville turning innocent civilians into bloodthirsty ghouls and monsters, James Watts and his loyal friends The Groovy Gang must fight to save the town from certain doom… unaware of a much greater intergalactic threat coming their way.
Eleven years after his father was murdered and sucked into a mysterious portal, James Watts aka Captain Cool and his group of loyal friends, The Groovy Gang find themselves protecting the small, secluded town of Bramsville from a constant barrage of ghouls, monsters and everything in between, leading up to a final confrontation between good and evil. All this happening whilst the gang try to deal with early adulthood and their arch nemesis, Sergeant Shithead and The Prick Patrol.
Writers: Nate James Williams and Jack Sinclair
Muse
Feature
Part of our Emerging Talents strand
A screenwriter escapes to the countryside for the weekend with his
wife and his editor to cure his writer's block, but instead finds
himself distracted by his sexual attraction towards his true object of
desire - his editor.
Muse is an examination of toxic masculinity and male impotence explored through the character of a successful screenwriter with low self-esteem. He can express himself in his written work, but his life is a mess and he cannot appreciate the gifts that life has already given him. Thought provoking, mature work from an emerging talent.
Writer: Bobby Charlton
Balloons
Feature
Part of our Emerging Talents strand
It's Lou Lou's tenth birthday, she is the youngest child of five siblings all but her brother Daniel (20) have left home, and now he is leaving too. Suzanne (60) the matriarch of the family is losing her health, and the grip she once had on her children. They have all established homes and families of their own... all she has left now is LOU Lou and her husband Andy.
Set in the 1990s Balloons is an examination of the breakdown of a family as seen through the eyes of a ten year old girl wise beyond her years. It is an emotional journey centred on Suzanne, who without her purpose in life, is left adrift, isolated and lonely.. Funny, heart rending work from an emerging talent.
Writer: Charlotte Chase