Working Title Films and Universal : The Integration of a British Production Company into a Hollywood Studio

Working Title Films is arguably the most successful and well-known production company in Britain today. For over 30 years, it has produced a diverse range of critically and commercially successful British films including romantic comedies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), family films like Bean (1997) and Nanny McPhee (2005) and dramas including Atonement (2007) and The Theory of Everything (2014). For the majority of its history, however, Working Title has been defined in business terms by its status as a subsidiary of one of two multinational media conglomerates, PolyGram (1992–8) and Universal (1998–present). The transition between the two began when PolyGram, and its film studio, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (PFE), was sold to Seagram, the parent company of Universal. This article examines Working Title’s integration into Universal and the evolving media ecology which shaped the processes of development, green-lighting, production, marketing and distribution at play within and between both companies between 1998 and 2006. In these respects, Working Title’s transition between parent companies is a narrative of both continuity and change. Significantly, three key stages of gatekeeping remained common to both the PFE and Universal eras: development, green-lighting and distribution. The institutional perimeters within which these points of decision-making occurred, however, changed considerably. The article concludes by considering the impact of such structures and processes on the films which Working Title produced, particularly their various representations of Britain and ‘Britishness’

The ‘wolves’ and ‘lambs’ of the creative city: the sustainability of film and television producers in London

The paper shows that creative producers (businesses and individuals) are sensitive to the externalities of the urban environment, such as the state of public places and the street in particular. However, relation to the street differs for creative producers with different power positions and levels of embeddedness in street life. This suggests attention needs to move beyond the simplistic approaches of “mixed–use” and “vitality” ideals to an understanding of the complexity and continuity inherent in the production of creative spaces with respect to the multiple transactions of both the strong and weak stakeholders involved – the “wolfs” and “lambs.” The example used is the film and television industry in Camden Town, London, in relation to the “experience” economy, drawing on evidence from interviews with producers