Some of the conversations taking place in the world about Character 7, our co-conspirators and our work

Breaking Baz: Thriller-Loving ‘Night Manager’ Producer Stephen Garrett Is The Real Muscle Behind J Blakeson’s Hot Disney+ Series ‘Culprits’

Catching the Culprits

Sam Grabiner wins the 40th-anniversary Verity Bargate Award

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Candyman; Misfits) will take the lead in Star Original Culprits.

Lead for Culprits is announced.

Two Emmy nominations this year for The Undoing

The Stage gives ‘Shedding a Skin’ a four star review.

"A sensation"

"A shrewd and zingy comedy"

A whip smart thriller is announced.

‘The Undoing’ Becomes HBO’s Most-Watched Series of 2020, Surpasses ‘Big Little Lies’ Audience

Stephen Garrett on the new era for storytelling

The Undoing becomes the most successful new series for Foxtel

The Undoing delivers huge audience numbers.

Hugh Grant got the ending he wanted.

The Undoing beats Game of Thrones

Why Hugh Grant never wanted to be the ‘gentleman’.

Stephen Garrett to adapt Holly Watt’s novel To The Lions under Character Seven banner

Character Seven to adapt thriller novels

“In this day and age we have to see possibilities“ Noma Dumezweni

Nicole Kidman sings The Undoing theme song

The Undoing began with a brilliant novel.

Amanda Wilkin wins 2020 Verity Bargate Award

Without writers, we producers have nothing to produce and directors no stories to make flesh.

A perfectly dreadful conversation...

A supremely gripping marriage thriller.

‪Buckle up! But leave some room on the floor for your jaw! #TheUndoing #StephenGarrett

Meet the cast. The Undoing

Who is who? The Undoing

Nicole Kidman talks about The Undoing.

The Dead Line by Holly Watt is a thriller about the dark side of fashion, fuelled by righteous anger

The Verity Bargate longlist is announced

The Undoing - A reckoning of the rich and entitled from HBO

HBO Dream Team Nicole Kidman, David E. Kelley, Wigs Return With The Undoing

A conversation with Character 7's Stephen Garrett about what's next for stories, TV, culture and a whole lot more.

Peaches is announced

This year's Emmys and The Undoing

Character Seven option rights to "Russians Among Us…"

‘The Undoing’: Noma Dumezweni Cast In HBO Limited Series – Deadline

‪Nicole Kidman & David E. Kelley On ‘Big Little Lies’, ‘The Undoing’ – Deadline

Supernatural spy game ‘The Rook’ turns the female gaze on a man’s world

The Rook Trailer

Starz’s supernatural spy game ‘The Rook’ turns the female gaze on a man’s world

The Mystery Unravels

Ready to Rook - Stephen Garrett Reveals All

The Rook’: Lisa Zwerling & Karyn Usher Join As Showrunners, EP Stephenie Meyer Exits Starz Spy Series

The Rook’: Emma Greenwell To Topline Starz Spy Series; Joely Richardson, Olivia Munn & Adrian Lester To Co-Star

Starz, Lionsgate & Liberty Global Team On Spy Thriller ‘The Rook’ With Stephenie Meyer, Stephen Garrett – TCA

Lionsgate and Liberty Global are partnering to produce supernatural spy thriller, The Rook, which will air on Starz in the U.S., and across Liberty Global’s international platforms. Twilight creator Stephenie Meyer and The Night Manager‘s Stephen Garrett are exec producing. This is Starz’s first series order from Lionsgate TV since Lionsgate acquired the pay cable network last year. Starz president and CEO Chris Albrecht made the announcement at TCA today.

‘Night Manager’ Leads BAFTA TV Craft Award Nominations

Three Golden Globes for The Night Manager

The Night Manger is the Globe’s biggest winner.

The Night Manager receives Golden Globe nominations

‘Night Manager’ team to be honoured at UK Production Guild Awards

The Ink Factory production team will pick up the Team Of The Year Award, accountant Pollyanna Gill wins Spotlight Award.
 
The 2016 UK Production Guild Awards will honour the team behind The Night Manager, the Ink Factory’s adaptation of John Le Carre’s novel, which starred Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie.
 
Now in its third year, the Production Guild Awards, in association with Warner Bros Studios Leavesden, was set up to celebrate Production Guild members working in the UK film and  TV drama industry. Award recipients work within the production office, production accounts, location management, VFX, post-production and assistant directing roles.
 
Five awards will be presented to mark individual or team contributions at a ceremony to be held at The Grove on Saturday (Sept 24).
 

Emmys: ‘The Night Manager’ Wins Best Directing for a Limited Series, Movie or Special

Emmys Spotlight: Tom Hiddleston was ‘moved’ by The Night Manager role before Emmy nod

While Tom Hiddleston is known by most as Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the actor earned his first Emmy nomination for The Night Manager, a project that drew him in for unexpected reasons.

“Interestingly enough, the most well-known things I’ve done have been actually at the extremes of my range, and I don’t look like myself, to be honest. I look like somebody else,” he told EW. “And as [Jonathan] Pine, I look like me, in a way. So that’s new. Strangely for an actor, that felt new.”

Hiddleston embraced the Gothic era in 2015’s Crimson Peak and he plays a tracker in 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, but the AMC miniseries envisioned him as an MI6 field agent tasked with bringing down an arms dealer, played by Hugh Laurie.

As the actor explained, he was drawn to “the tension in [Pine] between his exterior and interior. Someone who’s dutiful and diplomatic and elegant, but is sort of chaotic and turbulent on the inside.” He later added how moved he was by the character’s “moral courage.”

“The Edmund Burke quotation: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,’” Hiddleston said. “And Pine is a good man who does something, and I found that very moving.”
 

Stephen Garrett: Spooks producer on his obsession with spy stories and working with John le Carré

Having devoted so much of his career to making shows about spooks, it makes sense that Stephen Garrett should be working with the greatest spy writer of all.

It was John le Carré’s work that first convinced the co-founder of television company Kudos that an MI5-based series could be “a bit like” a cop show “only bigger”, and Spooks, one of the most successful TV drama and film franchises of the 21st century was the result.

When Garrett surprised the TV industry by walking out of Kudos two years ago, he was promptly approached by The Ink Factory, a company set up by Le Carré’s sons Stephen and Simon Cornwell and advised by the great author himself. The result of that collaboration is The Night Manager, a major BBC drama starring Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston, based on Le Carré’s 1993 novel. It is the first TV series to be shot in super-high definition 4K.
 

Stephen Garrett plots more John Le Carré

Kudos founder Stephen Garrett has lifted the lid on his new drama indie, revealing plans to develop a BBC series with the author of the Twilight saga and expand the John le Carré universe following the success of The Night Manager.

Kudos Founder Stephen Garrett Launches Character Seven, Boards Fickle Fish’s ‘The Rook’

LONDON — Stephen Garrett, founder of “MI-5” and “Life on Mars” producer Kudos, has launched production company Character Seven, which is developing “The Rook,” a Londonset supernatural series for Hulu, with “Twilight” author Stephenie Meyer’s company Fickle Fish and Lionsgate.

Garrett, who co-founded Kudos in 1992 and was later joint managing director with Jane Featherstone, oversaw a run of TV series hits including “MI-5” (known as “Spooks” in the U.K.), “Hustle” and “Life on Mars.” As a film producer and executive producer, Garrett’s credits include “Eastern Promises,” “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” and “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.”

Since leaving the Endemol Shine Group-owned company in 2014, Garrett has been working on projects that bring together international talents. His first credit under Character Seven, in partnership with the Ink Factory, is the John le Carré adaptation “The Night Manager,” starring Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Elizabeth Debicki. The six-part series will be shown on BBC in March and AMC in the U.S. in April.

Garrett said: “There is no longer a barrier between television storytelling and film storytelling. The creative talent is flowing both ways, and it respects neither national boundaries nor the size of the screen. I have always been excited by new types of story and new ways of telling them. With Character Seven I hope I can take this passion to the next level.”

“The Night Manager,” which Garrett exec produced, is helmed by Oscar-winning Danish director Susanne Bier. Character Seven collaborated with Le Carré’s sons Simon and Stephen Cornwell of the Ink Factory.
Garrett said: “I have enormously enjoyed my partnership with the Cornwells. They share both my love for storytelling and my desire to nurture new voices, as well as old. The fact that le Carré inspired my desire to first develop ‘Spooks’ means that everything has come full circle.”

Simon Cornwell said: “It’s been thrilling to work on ‘The Night Manager’ with Stephen Garrett. His combination of deep experience, creative insight and instinctive understanding of the evolution of the medium has brought something very special to the production. We are delighted to see Character Seven emerge as what will undoubtedly be a strong and innovative force in television on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Industry Icon Stephen Garrett Launching New Company Character Seven, Teaming With Lionsgate + Hulu On ‘The Rook’

Former Kudos founder and exec chairman Stephen Garrett is launching a new production company, Character Seven.  The new company is already making moves by teaming with Lionsgate and Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s Fickle Fish on The Rook, a London-set supernatural series for Hulu..