EXCLUSIVE: All3Media is cutting ties with Nautilus producer Seven Stories after a decade.
The move came following a strategic review of Seven Stories, we understand. Seven Stories’ IP including Nautilus, Ian McKellen-starring movie The Critic, and Netflix drama Selection Day will remain with All3Media.
Departing executives include Seven Stories founders Anand Tucker and Sharon Maguire, along with Creative Director Colleen Woodcock, who take any development projects with them and could reinstate the Seven Stories name without All3Media’s backing. “I’d like to thank Anand, Sharon and Colleen and wish them every future success,” All3Media CEO Jane Turton told Deadline.
Directors Tucker and Maguire launched Seven Stories with All3Media’s backing in 2015. Studio Lambert boss Stephen Lambert had introduced them to Turton, and Lambert was Chairman of Seven Stories up until very recently. A number of other Seven Stories staff such as legal and business affairs boss Gill Lang and production chief Ian Hogan also work with Studio Lambert and the wider All3Media company and are remaining with All3Media.
Seven Stories was probably best known for Nautilus, the adaptation of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas starring Shazad Latif and Richard E. Grant, which told the origin story of Captain Nemo and was co-produced with Moonriver TV. The show had quite the journey, initially due to air on Disney+ before being culled as part of a streaming content removal plan and ending up with AMC in the States and Prime Video in the UK and Ireland. No word yet on a second season.
Seven Stories also made The Critic, a 2023 movie directed by Tucker that starred McKellen as a theater critic for a tabloid newspaper run by a Viscount. Mark Strong, Gemma Arterton and Lesley Manville also starred. Selection Day, meanwhile, was an Indian web series picked up by Netflix about two brothers who have been trained by their father to become the next great pair of cricketers.
All3Media’s latest annual results revealed that Seven Stories’ value had been written down by £2.5M ($3.4M) following strategic review. It was one of a number of indies that had value written down, with write-downs totaling just over £60M across the super-indie.
Since being acquired by RedBird IMI last year for £1.15B, All3Media has been making sweeping changes to its labels. Lime Pictures had its London base shuttered and three long-running shows passed over to Objective Entertainment, while Lion TV US became a development studio and half a dozen staff were let go. All3Media has also launched two UK scripted labels, George Kay’s Observatory Pictures and Clelia Mountford’s Sunburnt Penguin.
We recently analyzed the Traitors and 1917 super-producer’s position in the market 12 months on from the RedBird IMI deal.
The post All3Media Shuttering ‘Nautilus’ Producer Seven Stories appeared first on Deadline.
