Wiggin Partner to Executive Produce The Lady in The Van

June 5, 2014

Charles Moore, who heads up the Film and TV practice at UK media law firm Wiggin, have successfully sourced the finance and distribution of the feature film version of “The Lady In The Van” based on the play by Alan Bennett, to be directed by Nicholas Hytner and to star Maggie Smith, who played the title role in the hugely successful run at the National Theatre . The film will shoot later this year in London and will be co-financed and distributed by BBC Films and TriStar Pictures, a division of Sony Columbia.

Moore was appointed as Executive Producer of the film by Hytner and Bennett earlier this year, which is a role they successfully performed on the film version of Bennett’s play “The History Boys” in 2006, also directed by Hytner. As a result of their work in raising the finance and distribution of that film using a highly innovative film financing structure, Moore and Ketley were awarded the Financial Times’ Innovative Lawyer of the Year Award .

Since The History Boys, he has subsequently  performed executive producing roles on various feature films which resulted in them formalising this activity by creating Wiggin EP, which is a film and TV packaging service overseen by Josephine Rose, previously a UK film development and acquisition executive. Wiggin EP works on an entrepreneurial basis – sharing risk and reward with the creative producers of their film and TV productions.

The Wiggin EP division works alongside Wiggin’s Film and TV legal practice which is one of the world’s leading entertainment practices, representing all of the US film studios and most of the UK networks and cable broadcasters, together with many leading UK independent companies and film/TV financiers. Moore is one of the only UK lawyer in private practice who was US studio executives, which puts him in a prime position to effect these executive producing deals.