BBCS alum launches Lone Wolf
Stephen McDonogh
MIPDOC: The former director of coproduction funding at BBC Studios (BBCS) has left the company to launch his own production firm, C21 has learned.
Stephen McDonogh had been with BBCS (fka BBC Worldwide) for more than 16 years, working on an array of drama, factual and feature films.
He co-exec produced Walking With Dinosaurs 3D and was producer on the BBC and Shanghai Media Group Pictures’ show Earth: One Amazing Day, and also has credits on dramas such as The Musketeers and Women in Love.
He left the company at the end of March and has now launched Lone Wolf Pictures (LWP), a production outfit based in London that is partnering with former Universal Media Group exec Ray Mia to produce both scripted and unscripted projects.
LWP will produce “a slate of immersive, inspiring and innovative cinematic stories,” McDonogh told C21, adding that it will be working across a mixed slate in longform and shortform.
The prodco’s “central premise” is to use “Hollywood-style filmmaking techniques” – using cutting-edge camera and audio tech to “heighten the senses of the audience and engage them into the centre of the story,” McDonogh said.
He added that the company would produce for global markets, with the BBCS alum adding that LWP was “in the beginnings of seeking a financial raise” and would also be hiring.
LWP already has a slate of projects including drama Out of the Darkness, which has Bafta and Emmy winning director Richard Dale attached, as well as feature duo Interplanetary and Sapiens (working title).
The company has also partnered with Mia and his Liverpool, UK-based company Jacaranda Records to work with McDonogh on immersive audio technologies.
“Digital platforms such as Apple TV+ and Netflix plus device manufactures such as Apple, Dolby, Sony, Samsung and others are all raising the bar in terms of how audiences experience and consume high-end audiovisual content within the home or on personal devices, so each are certainly adding opportunity to what is an exciting time to be in the content business,” McDonogh said.
“As technology finally begins meeting the boundless imagination of the human mind, it’s time to seek new ways to engage the human senses and connect global audiences to unique experiences of life, all intricately woven within meaningful and relatable stories that remind us just how important our home is.”