Lock, Stock & World Domination! The future looks bright for leading London movie company Hereford Films
After the massive home entertainment success of their film THE KRAYS – DEAD MAN WALKING, which enjoyed the biggest first week of any non-theatrical UK film this year, things are stepping up a gear at busy independent film production company Hereford Films.
With American horror film PENTAGRAM currently in post production and gangland home invasion thriller RECKONING DAY due before the cameras in November, the company is also gearing up to make a Krays sequel, provisionally entitled THE KRAYS – MARKED FOR DEATH. Reckoning Day is written and will be directed by Hereford SVP Adam Stephen Kelly, who directed the Vinnie Jones action movie Kill Kane.
The mastermind behind the successful company is 38 year old producer Jonathan Sothcott, Hereford’s CEO. Sothcott has produced nearly 40 movies including VENDETTA, WE STILL KILL THE OLD WAY and EAT LOCALS, working with big screen legends such as Jason Statham, Sir Roger Moore, Mark Hamill and Charlie Cox. His films have sold well over a million DVDs. This year Sothcott was awarded CEO Monthly’s ‘Most Innovative Film Production CEO 2018’.
Sothcott is unashamedly ambitious, with an unusually commercial outlook for the film business, often saying he has “one foot in Soho and the other in the City” making him a sharp, shrewd operator in an often vague business. His ambitions include opening an LA office by 2020 and making Hereford a recognisable brand for quality genre films the world over.
Sothcott’s Krays film proved the cynics who thought DVD sales for independent films were flagging – it peaked at 8 in the national charts and outsold big budget American films 4 to 1. Citing Guy Ritchie’s Lock Stock and Snatch as formative inspirations for his brand of low budget, high concept ‘geezer movies’ he explained his film-making philosophy on the James Whale radio show recently “sometimes you want a steak and a bottle of wine, sometimes you want a McDonalds. I make McDonalds movies.”
The company’s slate moving forward includes another sequel: WE STILL DIE THE OLD WAY, as well as international action films ASSAULT ON HAZARD ROCK, X-RAY ZERO NINER and US-set horrors AFTER SHOCK and WITCH HOUSE. There is also talk of a move into television and there’s no doubt the gritty Hereford style would lend itself to a Netflix series.
