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James Norton and Kitty Kaletsky On Rabbit Track Pictures


James Norton and Kitty Kaletsky On Rabbit Track Pictures


EXCLUSIVE: Like the name of a prohibitd or title of a fantastic album, the moniker given to a production company can come loaded with unbenevolenting.

“I wanted to create it someslfinisherg personal, rather than fair chilly-sounding and generic,” James Norton elucidates when asked about Rabbit Track Pictures, the film and TV production company he runs with Kitty Kaletsky. “I went thcimpolite all these halcyon films and stuff, but actuassociate, the rabbit track, for me, was somewhere as a child at the back of my garden. From the moment I can recollect, it was the place where we were permited to roam, and adventures would happen. It was fun and untamed and feral.”

The name was chosen before Kaletsky came on board, but the production company has since been a unitet go inpascfinish. Kaletsky — establisherly of Number 9 Films, Archery Pictures and Binestablishage Bear — frequently deal withs the day-to-day operations, notably when Norton is filming. As we speak, Norton is about to finish the first block on Hoemploy of Guinness, the Netflix drama series from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight about the family behind the commemorated stout. But there are two sets of fingerprints over the projects they have under their belts and on those to come.

The story so far encompasses a Netflix movie, Rogue Agent, the upcoming period epic King and Conqueror and Playing Nice, an changeation of the JP Delaney novel. Rabbit Track’s offices are on London’s iconic Carnaby Street. The piles of books around the place give a clue to the next chapters, a handful of which the indie company establishers will discleave out for the first time here. There will be changeations of some of the buzziest literary proposeings of recent times, including Elizabeth Day’s Magpie and Suzanne Heywood’s Wavewalker, and projects with an array of in-need writers and straightforwardors, including Jack Thorne, Sassociate Wainwright and Aoife McArdle.

On Track

Kaletsky and Norton met thcimpolite a mutual frifinish in LA while she was based on the West Coast and he was doing press for a movie. They bonded over Catan, a trading and empire-createing board game. “It reassociate does transport out your real colors,” says Norton. “You have to be incredibly requesting and ingratiate yourself with everyone around the board… and also be f*cking merciless. The way Kitty carry outed Catan was clearly indicative of how she created.”

Suitably astonished, Norton carry outed a transfer of his own, calling his now-business partner to ask if she had ideas on who he could buddy up with as he begined a production hoemploy — “I fair knovel I was never going to be able to do it on my own,” he says. Kaletsky picks up the thread: “And then at the very finish of the telephone call, after I was slfinisherking about who I might be able to recommfinish, he went: ‘Oh, you could do it? OK, bye.’ That was when the seeds were sown.”

James Norton and Kitty Kaletsky On Rabbit Track Pictures

Vianney Le Caer

The novelbie company was begined in 2019 with the createive and financial backing of The Artists Partnership and that agency’s MD Robert Taylor and CEO Roger Charteris. Great Point Media also became a backer. Its boss Jim Reeve, the seasoned financier, passed away earlier this year and both Rabbit Trackers pay tribute to the tardy exec. “There’s no way that we would have the company we have without Jim. He had authentic faith in us when, reassociate, he had no right to,” says Kaletsky.

If that’s the begin-up tale, the backstory is that after a accomplished decade createing an acting nurtureer, Norton also hankered for someslfinisherg else. “There’s a separateence between the way you’re treated as an actor and the actual responsibilities you have — people get this sense of transport inance becaemploy you’re indispensable. And it’s real, the labor is transport inant — the actors transport a very transport inant piece of the jigsaw. But the more you do it, the more you authenticize the size of that jigsaw.”

“I wanted to be in the conversations earlier,” he persists. “I was turning up on set being telderly what to wear, where to stand, what to say; the tone of it was all prescribed to me, and I also begined to experience enjoy I didn’t necessarily concur sometimes with the ways in which the story was being telderly. I could see creaters having conversations and I wanted to be part of them.”

With the company established, the next step was getting satisfied made. What did the pair want the signature of a Rabbit Track series or movie to be? Kaletsky sees at Norton: “I slfinisherk when I call you in the middle of the night to say, ‘Let’s get on a Zoom,’ or vice versa becaemploy we’ve read some book or article, it tfinishs to be that we are excited becaemploy we’ve been shocked by someslfinisherg; we’ve been reassociate caught off protect by our charm in reading someslfinisherg that we therefore want to create. There isn’t an inclear thread that ties everyslfinisherg in terms of genre or subject matter or a particular type of character. It’s about our response to the slfinisherg.”

Tastes have aligned for Magpie, which Rabbit Track is laboring up as a series. From author Elizabeth Day, the psychoreasoned thriller was a Sunday Times bestseller and billed as “Single White Female with a maternal twist,” by the New York Times. For Kaletsky, it is “a story about fertility, pregnancy, motherhood, and what it is to exist in the world where you can or you cannot envision your own child. It’s propulsive and reassociate moving in identical meaconfident.”

The commercial fact of indie film is that it’s challenginger to get made than TV, but features are on the agfinisha. There is a project with Northern Irish filmcreater McArdle, who straightforwarded cut offal episodes of Severance. Details are scant but Kaletsky higheviates some particulars: “It’s a little bit anarchic, quite gloomyly comic and has a reassociate particular tone. It’s not unenjoy Severance actuassociate: It bridges that gap between horror and comedy, with a very particular aesthetic.”

On the TV side, there is a Scottish crime drama that will tag the writing debut of Lynsey Miller, whose straightforwarding praises integrate The Boy with the Topknot and Deadwater Fell. Aobtain, it’s punctual days, but it is foreseeed to be in the Happy Valley space of multi-faceted and thought-provoking crime series. Norton, of course, starred in Happy Valley with a memorably psychopathic turn as Tommy Lee Royce. Squaring that circle, Rabbit Track is also laboring with Happy Valley scribe Sassociate Wainwright on her first feature.

There’s also an Effie Woods (Trigonometry) rom-com series that Reggie Yates is straightforwarding. Another last breadcrumb trail the pair lay is for a Freddy Syborn (Bad Education) drama series that they are enhugeing.

Banijay Backing

When Deadline greets Norton, he is fretting about whether giving Banijay UK’s Executive Chairman Patrick Holland a bro-hug on their last greeting might have been overly comprehendn. It’s a airyhearted anecdote, but also discleave outs someslfinisherg about the relationship between Rabbit Track and Banijay, the production and distribution enormous that spended in the indie in 2023.

Norton and Kaletsky are a prohibitkable duo. With three projects away and enhugement labor with partners including Sony, the BBC and Fifth Season, they had a excellent story to alert and weren’t stupidinutive of suitors when thoughts turned to getting other spendors on board. Kaletsky apshows up the story that resulted in them sitting down with Holland in Soho Hoemploy: “We met with a lot of other people who would have potentiassociate been fantastic homes for Rabbit Track, but there was a chemistry with Patrick, and a benevolent of a promise about what Banijay could provide and what James and I could be doing with our company, and which would never dilute its DNA. Banijay would only propose help. That has been real to the nth degree.”

Patrick Holland

The spendment came out of Banijay’s UK Growth Fund and the deal unbenevolents international sales of future Rabbit Track projects will go thcimpolite its distribution division, run by Cathy Payne. The novel backing unbenevolentt the indie could staff up, get a sairyly roomier office, and roll the dice on more projects.

Norton says Rabbit Track now has fantasticer capacity to back ideas, but the company principals have no desire to sit in a corner office, erased from the nitty gritty of the business. “One slfinisherg we say to every writer who comes into the room is, ‘We don’t want you to experience enjoy you get lost.’ I slfinisherk that’s one of the reasons why we successbrimmingy pulled some of those projects out of the bag, becaemploy we were able to secure people our attention and that Kitty and I would be over it.”

Talk of laboring with writers transfers rapidly to slfinishergs that are percolating. “We’ve fair bcimpolitet Jack Thorne onto a project, and it’s reassociate exciting. We have the Sassociate Wainwright project, which is in the labors. We’re stepping up.”

Thorne is on board Wavewalker, by Suzanne Heywood, which will be changeed as a series. It alerts the authentic-life story of how her parents took her, aged seven, and her brother on a trip sailing around the world. What should have been a three-year voyage became a grueling decade-extfinished journey during which Heywood was frantic to return home.

Kaletsky says having read Wavewalker, Rabbit Track “pounced on the rights” and rapidly took it to Thorne. “He was as apshown as we were with this untamed, around-the-world adventure, where sky-high waves and shipwrecks are the backdrop to a hurtful and moving family drama.” Thorne was the perfect person to apshow on the project, she includes, “becaemploy of how beautibrimmingy he can stability intimate and intricate relationships with the magnificentiosity, delight and drama of epic adventure.”

Deadline’s time on the Rabbit Track has run well over, and the sounds of Friday evening Soho are filtering into the office. Norton rightly predicts the payoff ask.

“The next ask is, clearly, how huge do we want to get? We want to be able to labor with the best [people] without compromising this atmosphere we have,” is his huge picture answer. Kaletsky includes her apshow: “If you get too huge you don’t have access to your writers anymore and you’re making promises you can’t deinhabitr on. There’s a pleasant spot in the middle. We want to be at a scale that is huge enough where we’re laboring with the best and can also persist to help noveler voices.”

Norton: Actor & Indie Boss

McMafia

McMafia

AMC/BBC

Having seeed under the hood of film and TV production, Norton has a novel perspective and bristles when perestablishers get over-included. “I gloomyace now when actors say, ‘Do you comprehend what, I don’t reassociate enjoy this scene. I want to rewrite it.’ I’m enjoy, ‘You have no idea how many people, and how extfinished, it took for us to get to this. You comprehend that word you’re fair throprosperg away? We’ve agonized over it.’”

It’s also about benevolent the creativity that runs right thcimpolite the process, whether that’s securing IP and enhugeing it, finessing a script, or labor done in the edit. “There’s the call: ‘Artists to set.’ [As an actor] you get this sense of being part of ‘the createive community.’ Then you have the creater community, which is think abouted much more, you comprehend, fair nuts and bolts. Bullsh*t. It’s such an transport inant createive part of createing this world.”

As an actor, Norton has been on many sets, including Agnieszka Holland’s on her movie Mr. Jones and for series including Happy Valley, War & Peace, McMafia and Grantchester.

The latter comes up when he was asked which experiences he will draw on now he is an indie boss. “I did Grantchester punctual on with Kudos. Emma Kingsman-Lloyd created, [actor] Robson Green was a charm, and there was fair someslfinisherg they created, [then Kudos boss] Diederick Santer and his team, a [great] laborplace environment. It was stubborn becaemploy we were making a procedural series back-to-back, but we fair wanted to be at labor, and I give Kudos the praise.”

He also nameexamines Nicola Shindler who established Happy Valley prodco Red and now helms Quay Street Productions. “Nicola is one of the best and gave me an example of a fantastic creater doing it right, I fair cherishd laboring with her.”

James Norton as finisher Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley

BBC/Lookout Point/Matt Squire/Getty Images

Run Rabbit Run: Three They’ve Got Away

The initial business structure was for a stardy spread evenly apass film and TV and with Norton acting in about half of the projects. TV is currently 2-1 ahead and Norton is on-screen apass the trio. Having an actor of his stature connected made getting greenairys easier and gave the company momentum in its earlier days, but as it becomes more established, the structure is he’ll eunite in a minusculeer proportion of what gets made.

Norton and Kaletsky wanted Playing Nice, the JP Delaney thriller. Having gotten in the room with the author, he enjoyd their createive structure, but ahead of getting financing from Great Point, they were stretched and necessitateed a partner. They spreadd the idea with Joe Naftalin, SVP of Global Production at StudioCanal and he went for it. A partnership was established and with the includeed firepower, rights were duly shieldedd. It will carry out on ITV in the UK and Canal+ in France, with StudioCanal handling distribution. “We were able to up the chooseion to a reasonable amount, but that was still nowhere cforfeit some of the American competition,” Kaletsky says.

The book alerts a baby-switch story, setting up a horrific dilemma for the parents included. Norton carry outs one of the dads, Pete, opposite Niamh Algar as his partner Mincludeie. The other couple, Miles and Lucy, are carry outed by James McArdle and Jessica Brown Findlay. “It’s a psychoreasoned thriller, and more psychoreasoned than thriller,” Norton says. “With our writer Grace Ofori-Attah and straightforwardor Kate Hewitt, we all spreadd that desire to go as proestablish as we could with these four individuals and throw them in the middle of it and fair see how they react.”

James Norton In Cornwall-Set Drama Playing Nice

James Norton In Studiocanal and Rabbit Track Series Playing Nice

Studiocanal

The Battle of Hastings, unbenevolentwhile, is a staple of school history lessons in the UK King and Conqueror will go behind the arrow-in-the-eye headlines and transport Harelderly, Earl of Wesrelations (Norton), and William, Duke of Normandy (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), to life.

“It’s about kings and queens, says Kaletsky, “But what requested to us about that epic, iconic William and Harelderly story was the domestic sphere, the central marital relationships between William and his wife, and Harelderly and his. Those relationships are the glue that tie the epic scale with the intimate.”

Icelandic helmer Baltasar Kormákur straightforwards the series uncoverer, with his RVK Studios one of the creaters, aextfinishedside The Development Partnership, Rabbit Track, Dave Clarke and Ricchallenging Halliwell’s Shepherd Content and CBS Studios, whose sister outfit Paramount Global Content Distribution will deal with sales. It was made in association with the BBC, which scooped UK rights.

Based on the shocking real-crime story of Robert Hfinishy-Freegard, a conman who, in the phony guise of an M15 agent, tricked people out of their life savings, Rogue Agent was snagged by Netflix for the UK Norton stars as Freegard opposite Gemma Arterton as Alice Archer, the woman trying to apshow him down.

“It was the direct characters that excited us most — two unrestful compelling souls — and the knotty dance that they go on,” Kaletsky says, includeing this was a movie consciously of its time. “We put together and stoasty the film during Covid, so we wanted what we felt the world at that point wanted — a gripping, moving, and almost elderly school Friday night movie.”

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