Fired Up Films and eOne goes for The Kill
Date Posted: December 10, 2018
Belfast-based Fired Up Films, helmed by Jon-Barrie Waddell and Simon Howley has announced a string of new scripted projects as they continue to make strong headway within their first year of business.
Earlier this year, Fired Up Films and Entertainment One (eOne) announced a multi-year overall television deal, whereby eOne will co-produce and serve as the studio on scripted and unscripted content from Fired Up.
Fired Up Films has a close working relationship with Northern Ireland Screen who is backing several of the indie’s scripted projects including The Box, a returning comedy/drama series set on the North Coast of Ireland based on a female boxing gym. The Box is written by Irish actress and writer Victoria Smurfit.
“We’ve been working with Victoria in LA on a factual series and she shared the idea for THE BOX – we loved it and have been developing it with her for over a year. She’s a great writer, we are so pleased to be working with her.
“We want to make positive, feel good films about life in Northern Ireland, and prove great real-life drama can be set here – and that it’s not just a world of fantasy and cops!”
“The Box is the Northern Ireland of now, the story of a group of women taking their shot at a ‘second youth’. The Box, is a run down gym where our characters get the choice, to either slide in to middle age or grab their second youth.
The series is about unlikely friendships – they are all odd ducks who fit nowhere in life, but somehow manage to find each other in the beautiful, rain soaked, coastal town of Portstewart. It’s a story with humour, pathos and a punch or three,” added Howley.
Fired Up Films’ advanced development slate includes series Catch Me a Killer set in the US, Ireland and South Africa including a true-life serial killer drama set in Cape Town in the 1990’s with the South African Police’s first serial killer profiler.
“We both come from a factual programming background and it’s a natural step for Fired Up Films to exploit that in the burgeoning scripted space – we already have a series in development with the BBC which initially came about from a true crime documentary we were developing,” said Waddell
Catch Me a Killer (WT) is based on the best-selling autobiography of the same name by Micki Pistorius. It documents the turbulent six years the author spent tracking down and profiling South Africa’s most feared killers.
Set against a backdrop of rising crime and mass murder, the series focuses on the life of the newly qualified forensic psychologist as she enters service as a member of the South African Police Force.
Howley says “In the mid 90’s, the World saw no more of South Africa than the hope of Mandela and the world of Invictus, but this series goes well beyond the headlines. It’s a psychologically dark thriller dealing with not just the hunt for serial killers (there were more serial killers in South Africa than anywhere else in the World) but also with the internal politics within the rapidly changing South African Police Force.
As soon as the book came to us we knew we had it to it,” continued Waddell and Howley.
