Jonathan Sothcott interview

We caught up with veteran British producer Jonathan Sothcott to discuss his busy Shogun Films outfit which has just wrapped its fourth movie in a year.

You set up Shogun Films in 2020 but really seem to have hit your stride in the past year – what has changed?
The first two films, Nemesis and Renegades, were made over the course of the various lock downs which was a very difficult time to gauge the market and that market just changed, almost overnight. There was a move away from the ‘old men with guns’ movies which had been a staple of the action genre the way found footage was to horror and I don’t think anyone saw that coming. That’s not to say the great ones, the exceptional ones, don’t have their place, but they need to have really unique concepts and not just lazy cameos from fading stars propping them up. That sector became incredibly over saturated and the initial strategy required a rethink. Summer 2023 saw the start of what I call Shogun 2.0 – high concept, unique genre movies from great filmmakers that would really stand out in the market.

You’re best known for gritty British crime movies such as We Still Kill The Old Way and Vendetta – will Shogun Films be operating in that space?
I don’t think so, no. It isn’t a space I ever actively sought to be in, my first half a dozen movies were horrors really, when I was 24 I was running The Horror Channel and I always thought that would be the path I was on. I sort of fell into it by chance because it was such big business during the UK DVD boom, but you get stuck in a rut and making these things and they get worse and worse and suddenly you’re talking about Essex Boys On The Run and Krays On The Moon and it just isn’t for me. Those aren’t stories that I want to tell. It became a cliché but as a filmmaker you become typecast like actors do. When those films are done well – The Long Good Friday, The Krays, Lock Stock, The Business, the first Rise of the Footsoldier, they are terrific. The better films I made in that space were always revenge movies dressed up as gangster movies anyway. I was very lucky working with all the big names in that genre – Craig Fairbrass, Vincent Regan, Dexter Fletcher - guys like that are world class talents, and I think that genre should always have a place as a platform for working class British voices (of which there are very few left) which is important. But for me that chapter of my life is over.


Picture: Jeanine Sothcott in Helloween

How is it working with your wife, the actress Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott who you founded Shogun with?
It’s the cherry on the cake of the whole thing because quite apart from anything else we love spending time together (not all couples do!) and we work really well together. As Jeanine has matured and grown as an actress we find that writers are submitting scripts with better and better roles for her and she has now become a natural part of the package for distribution without it ever feeling like we just sit here creating vehicles for her. She was the best thing about Nemesis by a mile and made the best out of a small role in Renegades but in our three latest movies she’s really come into her own, delivering one winning performance after another. I’m obviously her biggest fan but even if we weren’t married that wouldn’t change, I think she’s a very, very talented actress with a completely unique look owing to her Trinidadian/Guyanese heritage and she really brings a unique flavour to everything she’s in. She’s a strong woman and we need more of those in the UK film business and she loves the genres we work in – for me she’s a sounding board but she never agrees with me for the sake of it, she’ll always fight her corner when she believes in something. Without Jeanine there’s no Shogun.

Helloween, Doctor Plague and Knightfall all seem very different – tell us something to look forward to about each?
Helloween is an ambitious, 80s tinged horror, written and directed by Phil Claydon, which is set during the 2016 killer clown phenomenon and I don’t think there has been anything remotely like it come out of the UK. Boasting three incredibly strong central performances from Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott, Michael Paré and Ronan Summers and expertly directed by Claydon it really punches above it’s weight in terms of style and atmosphere, both of which it has bundles of. It feels like something very special and I think the horror crowd are going to love it just as much as we do.

Doctor Plague is also a horror, but it’s also a serial killer movie, it sits in the same milieu as things like Silence of the Lambs and even The Wicker Man – it focuses on a London detective investigating a spate of gangland murders which he suspects are the work of a serial killer. Under pressure to chalk it up as gang related by his superiors, he is drawn into a conspiracy about an ancient cult of Plague Doctors cleansing London of its sinners. It’s something really fresh and different and boasts an absolutely exceptional central performance from Martin Kemp. When I first started in this business Martin was an actor I admired and wanted to work with and there’s a lot of shared history but I was absolutely blown away by him in this film, his performance really is terrific, maybe his best ever. I think this movie will really connect with a female audience as well as a male one.


Picture: Martin Kemp and Jonathan Sothcott

And Knightfall is another one I’m really proud of. The director Ben Mole and I have been developing it for over a year, it arrived as a spec from writers James Smy and Robert Dunn as a vehicle for Ian Ogilvy and Jeanine. It has ultimately blossomed into a really smart espionage thriller with some great action and a terrific cast. Geoffrey Moore and I had talked about him being in one of my films for some years and it was a case of waiting for the right film and the right role. In Knightfall he plays a dashing MI5 agent which may seem like a nod to his heritage but there’s a lot more to it than that – this isn’t just a bang bang action movie, it’s a clever, multi-layered thriller – classic yet also modern. Geoffrey adds something really different to the film and the combination of him, Ian and Jeanine, and a really nice turn from Robert Cavanah as the villain, make this another movie that over delivers.

What makes these films special is that they’re unlike anything else in the market right now – they’re not just another rehash of something you’ve seen a million times before; they’re original and different.

What’s next for Shogun Films?
We’re just about to start pre-production on our most ambitious project yet, the action-horror Werewolf Hunt. Drawing inspiration from Predator, The Beast Must Die and The Running Man, this is one I’m really excited about. We’ve had some phenomenal practical Werewolf suits made in America which are just absolutely stunning. This is a creature feature for the ages. He thing with werewolf movies is there are so many but so few good ones, either because the monsters let them down (I’m not an advocate of CGI creatures) or the writers tie themselves up in knots with the mythology – most of what we take for granted as well-established lore actually came from the Lon Chaney movie in the 30s (full moons, silver bullets etc) – and we’ve worked incredibly hard to avoid those pitfalls. That shoots October with a top tier international cast and will be out in 2025. I have a feeling this will probably become the movie I’m remembered for in years to come.

I have two more horrors in the immediate future, female-centric vampire thriller Midnight Kiss, written by Simon Cluett (We Still Steal The Old Way) and Harbinger, which is a cool original concept about an ancient evil trapped in a fairground fortune telling machine.

We then have an action movie called Active Shooters, a very cool Die Hard style thriller with a terrific script by Chad Law and Josh Ridgway. This is exactly the kind of elevated project that I was talking about and will work because it’s clever and different – it’s been gestating a while but is just about ready to get moving now. In movies, timing is everything.

In Q1 2025 I have a great hitman thriller called Too Long The Night, written and directed by Stephen Reynolds (Vendetta) and an action movie called No Good Men, plus more horror to be announced soon. It’s a very exciting time.

What kind of movies would you like to be making in 5 years?
If I can maintain the quality of the last three I’ll be happy. I don’t have aspirations of bigger budgets or huge stars, I am trying to scale Shogun into being the premiere producer of quality genre movies in the UK and Western Europe. We have a successful formula, there’s a huge appetite for the product we’re making, now it is just a case of increasing the volume without sacrificing quality. In 1971, Hammer Films made, I think, 8 movies. In 2025 I’d like Shogun to top that. It may not be possible but we’ll have a bloody good go.

What do you look for in a script or project?
We live in the age of the Thumbnail now – viewers don’t have the luxury of one sheets and ad campaigns to guide them now, we’re reliant on a tiny square image to capture the imagination. That means we have to have a product that they can easily ID, that draws them in. With horror that means clearly identifiable antagonists because the market is so crowded. So you know Helloween is a killer clown, you know what the Plague Doctor mask is for Doctor plague. So that kind of elevator pitch horror is very much in our wheelhouse, as opposed to 6 kids being killed by someone from a chat room or lost in the woods. I’m always interested in shark movies but Jaws is my favourite film so it needs to be serious and clever, not Snow Sharks or Ghost Sharks or whatever the hell the next one of those is. And there’s still a real interest in action movies, that market will never go away, they just need to be elevated as opposed to Taken clones. Revenge is a trope that will always be popular it’s just a case of finding new ways to interpret it.


Picture: Geoffrey Moore and Jonathan Sothcott

How do you feel about the current state of the British film industry?
I think it’s in the best place it has been since I started. For companies like Shogun, raising finance to make a pipeline of movies, the UK Film Tax credit incentive has been doubled from 20% to 40% and the Enterprise Investment Scheme has just been extended by the new chancellor for another decade so it is the best possible scenario for financiers and therefore, ultimately, audiences. We have absolutely no ceiling on our ambition, I feel like we’re at a turning point of a bold new dawn of British genre movies and that makes me very happy indeed. Let’s make movies!

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