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PRESENTS
PRESENTS
behind the news
Says Kenworthy: “I hope the fact that DNA is made up of just two producers demonstrates that we are committed to making a significant percent- age of our films with independent producers. Although we will always choose the projects our- selves, we intend to spread the benefit of the Lottery allocation more widely through the indus- try.” Both Kenworthy and Macdonald emphasise that filmmakers “can now come one-stop shop- ping” at DNA, which they dub “the writers’ studio.”
DNA sees itself as a very different animal from the other two franchises. Says Kenworthy: “We set
ourselves up deliber-
ately as a very small
franchise to demon-
strate that if we
were going to make
16 films over six
years we weren’t going to produce them
all. We’ve actually said that of the 16 Andrew or I will produce six and the other 10 will come from independent producers. The other franchises were concerned at making it clear they were a good bet and they’ve got lots of impressive pro-
Photos: Andrew Macdonald with John Hodge, and inset with Steve Coogan
ducers attached. I imagine they’ll be mostly pro- ducing those films themselves and I don’t think that’s wrong either.
“As well as being smaller we also have a pro- ductivity drawback in that we don’t have loads of films up our sleeves. Which is why we’ve said one in the first year then three a year for the next five.
“Are there a lot of hand-me-down projects about? Yes, that’s definitely the case. It’s a com- pletely different world out there even from the one when the scheme was first dreamed up. Now it’s a sellers’ market. Lots of companies are look- ing for that elusive brilliant screenplay. We’re not the only game in town as Channel Four was for so many years.
“We’re all competing to be the first to see these scripts but most of the 500-600 we’ve been sent have probably been around for years, and even the ones that have been half good are likely to have done the rounds with everyone else. I hope that as we make the films, which will hope- fully succeed, and it becomes clear that the peo- ple who bring us the films are going to make money too, we will become more and more the studio of choice.”
Apparently it was Oscar-winning filmmaker Anthony (The English Pat ient ) Minghella who originally came up with the company name. Says Kenworthy: “Apart from cleverly linking Andrew and me, we thought it had a rather cool connection with
the stuff of life.
“Also I like names
that don’t really mean anything. You can get stuck with a funny or fancy name which sounds
fine for a year then begins to pall after a while.” One suspects that in every sense DNA is like-
ly to survive the long haul. ■ QUENTIN FALK