Finola Dwyer Building on Success of Brooklyn

Celebrating six BAFTA nominations and three Oscar nominations, Wildgaze Films duo Wellington-born Finola Dwyer and Briton Amanda Posey look back at Brooklyn’s journey and ahead to their future slate and ambitions.

Brooklyn was launched at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and has achieved success at the box-office and vast critical acclaim. Before that, Dwyer and Posey achieved similar success with An Education.

Dwyer and Posey operate Wildgaze Films out of an office in Soho with two employees, including a head of development for film and TV. They also hire additional support when they have a film in production, for instance a post-production assistant recruited for Lone Scherfig’s Their Finest Hour And A Half. The film, which Wildgaze is co-producing with Number 9 Films and BBC Films, is currently in post-production.

The pair set up Wildgaze in 2012 with MEDIA funding for their development slate, and in 2013 were awarded money from the BFI’s Vision Awards initiative, established to support UK production companies for two years with up to £200,000 of slate funding.

Wildgaze are also developing a TV spin-off of Brooklyn, and are planning their first leap into genre with an adaptation of Michelle Paver’s critically acclaimed Arctic-set ghost story Dark Matter.

They will also go into production this year on an adaptation of Australian novelist Tim Winton’s thriller Dirt Music, which they developed with Film4 and which will be an Australia-UK co-production.

“We don’t have any desire to grow massively or increase the output,” Dwyer says. “For us, it’s really just about getting involved with material that we believe we can take all the way. Volume has never been our thing. You only have so many hours in the day.”

While the future looks bright for Wildgaze, Dwyer and Posey still have a few more weeks to bask in the glory of their Brooklyn success – whatever transpires on BAFTA and Oscar nights.

Original article by Matt Mueller, Screen Daily, February 5, 2016.