Fresh from its hugely impressive haul of nine Emmy nominations for hit Apple TV+ show “Slow Horses,” powerhouse producers See-Saw Films has unveiled a slate of new literary options also being developed for TV.
The British/Australian company, which in recent years has demonstrated its ability to amass acclaim, awards and audiences on the big screen (“The King’s Speech,” “The Power of the Dog,” “One Life”) and small (alongside “Slow Horses,” it also produces Netflix hit “Heartstopper”), has landed the rights to three pieces of IP, including one that has already proved a hit on stage.
Playwright Benedict Lombe’s epic romance “Shifters” — starring “Supacell” lead Tosin Cole and “The Power” actress Heather Ageypong — is currently in the process of transferring to the West End after a sellout run at the Bush Theater (and with Idris Elba recently joining the play’s lineup of producers). But it’s now also being adapted by Lombe for TV with See-Saw, with plans to take the story beyond the stage play and into a returning series.
“It’s a very sweeping love story borne out of a very specific set of characters,” says Helen Gregory, who oversees See-Saw’s team of exec producers and was recently upped from creative director to joint-MD (alongside Simon Gillis, who was upped from chief operating officer). “It follows two characters who basically meet as the only Black kids in school in their philosophy class and experience that astonishing imprint of first love and tracks them as they grow apart, together, apart, together, allowing us to explore the challenges and joys of intimacy and how we all have the potential to get in our way.”
Also in development is “The Romantic Tragedies of a Teenage Drama King,” the debut novel from actor and comedian Harry Trevaldwyn, who became an online sensation during the pandemic for his social media videos and has gone on to star in the English remake of “Call My Agent!” and the upcoming “How to Train Your Dragon” live-action feature.
The book — which is being published by Pan Macmillan in early 2025 — follows a “young man who decides to reinvent himself and go on a mission to get a boyfriend, regardless of whether he’s getting much encouragement from the world around him,” says Gregory, who adds that is it “very funny.” Trevaldwyn is himself adapting for the screen, with the hope that, like “Shifters,” it can become a returning series.
And then there’s award-winning author Francesca Segal’s recently-published “Welcome to Glorious Tuga,” following a London vet who takes up a fellowship on a tiny, remote island to study an endangered breed of tortoises — and also to solve a mystery in her own life.
All three titles came to See-Saw following competitive bidding processes, notes Gregory, who claims that the market for IP — whether from established or first-time writers — is incredibly hot at the moment with a “lot of buzz and a lot of competition.”
See-Saw Films joint MD Helen Gregory
See-Saw Films
But for Gregory, who actually arrived at See-Saw to oversee its TV side just as “Slow Horses” and “Heartstopper” were about to launch, these new projects — and the fact they came to the company — are the fruits of a model she helped build in response to seeing how founders and joint CEO’s Iain Canning in London and Emile Sherman in Sydney had worked together in film, and how its two very different hit TV shows had landed with such a “clear sense of surefooted identity.”
Rather than having a head of development, Gregory says See-Saw deliberately moved away from a system of “central control.” Instead, across the U.K. and Australia they have nine different slates that all fit under the See-Saw umbrella, with each skewed in slightly different directions and led by different exec producers encouraged to follow their passions and seek out creatives and new material.
“This really allows people to believe in what they’re doing and us backing that belief,” she says. “Since we set it up we’ve realized that, if we are really holding the space to empower those EPs to follow their guts and their passions, that is replicating in the relationships they are having with the talent from the outside in.”
The lead exec producers across the new projects include Moss Barclay and Maria Nicholson for “Shifters,” Luke Franklin for “Welcome to Glorious Tuga” and Patrick Walters for “The Romantic Tragedies of a Teenage Drama King.” Walters — who exec produced “Heartstopper” — is working under his recently launched Fanboy label, which is also behind the Sky/Starz black comedy “Sweetpea,” based on CJ Skuse’s 2017 novel (with “Fallout” lead Ella Purnell starring and exec producing).
“Slow Horses” Season 4 is set to land in early September (a fifth season, announced in January, is currently shooting), while the third season of “Heartstopper” arrives on Netflix in October. The film side may be less noisy for See-Saw following a busy couple of years in which it had six features, including “One Life,” “Operation Mincemeat,” and “The Royal Hotel.” However, the company did recently announce it is developing a big-screen return for beloved children’s novel “The Neverending Story,” while it also has “Tenzing,” the biopic of famed Everest mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, starring Tom Hiddleston and Willem Dafoe.
As Gregory notes, See-Saw’s successful replication of its work as a prestige tastemaker from film into television has, in just a few years, brought about a seismic shift at the heart of the company.
“We really do see ourselves as a TV and film company and not as a film company that makes TV,” she says. “I think that shift has been well and truly made.”
Source Agencies
