EXCLUSIVE: Embankment Films is making Garbo: Leave Me Alone, a function documentary in regards to the enigmatic film star who died in 1990. The doc may have beforehand unseen archive materials together with private images of Garbo and letters written by the long-lasting actress, who’s thought to be one of many all-time greats.
Production is underway and the movie may have a theatrical launch on the finish of this yr earlier than bowing on Sky within the UK in 2025. It is being made in partnership With Non Stop Entertainment and co-produced with Mylla Films, the Scandi label based by Patrik Andersson and Jakob Abrahamsson. Fremantle is on board for worldwide gross sales.
Lorna Tucker, whose earlier work contains Katharine Hepburn function doc Call Me Kate, will direct. “This is a natural follow on to Call Me Kate in a way because it’s a similar era, but it is a very different story because here is somebody who just walked away from [stardom],” producer Nick Taussig informed Deadline.
Embankment is working with the Swedish Film Institute and Scott Reisfeld who manages the Garbo property – and people relationships unlocked the trove of recent archive materials. Drama vignettes can be used within the movie to carry to key moments to life .
At age 35, with 4 Academy Award nominations, Garbo instantly retired, by no means to behave once more. Until the top of her life, a half century later, she fiercely declined all alternatives to return to the display screen, shunning publicity.
The movie can be a recent retelling of Garbo’s story. “You basically had a young woman living in relative poverty in Sweden who ended up a queen of Hollywood for a period of time, which is extraordinary,” Taussig defined. “There was no privilege, and I think, for us, it’s very much about trying to tell that, it’s about that story of her rise.”
Embankment has moved into creating its personal content material that performs on each the massive and small display screen. It has partnered with veteran UK producer Kevin Loader and, individually, introduced in Taussig, Malcolm Neaum, Sophie Harmer and Henry Farrington to spice up its non-fiction division. The factual slate contains the just lately introduced Riccardo Servini movie Dwarf Story, picked up by ITV, and Daniel Gordon’s Strike: An Uncivil War, in regards to the UK miners’ strike.
The financing plan for the function docs sees them have a cinema launch, which means they qualify for UK movie incentives. Taussig, who was the founding father of Salon Pictures and produced vogue doc McQueen, stated Embankment will use its movie finance smarts to construct a slate of pageant pleasant fare that additionally has mainstream attraction.
“As an independent film sales and financing company Embankment is used to working with quite complex financing models,” he stated. “And what that means is that we can, for example, go ‘okay, let’s make this theatrical, let’s utilize the UK film tax credit,’ which many TV production companies might not think of.”
In phrases of Embankment’s subsequent strikes in factual and unscripted, there are extra big-ticket biographical docs are within the works – and a transfer into collection is afoot. “Singles are just harder and harder to do” Taussig stated. “I think a focus is on talent-led and also access-driven series, which are something Malcom has done a lot of with Savile Row and others – he has that experience of getting access to really interesting and surprising precincts.”