Need to know: Actor Jude Law and his business partner Ben Jackson set up Riff Raff Entertainment in 2017 after first meeting in a pub in Primrose Hill, London in 2000. They have built it into a small but serious production company, producing Harry Wootliff’s TrueThings in 2021 and securing investment from Calculus Capital in 2022. The revved-up Riff Raff squeezed in Justin Kurzel’s The Order before the US writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023, and shot TV series Black Rabbit for Netflix when the industry returned to work.
Further support comes from a first-look deal with Anton and Studio TF1 for film, and with Newen Connect for TV. “It’s win-win for us,” says Jackson of the deal with the interconnected companies, all with different remits. “We can take a project to them and they can put it with the team that likes the project.”
The company now has a diverse development slate of writer-driven projects and is aiming to open a Los Angeles office.
“We’re hoping to expand through the involvement and the tastes of the people who are leading the development team,” says Law. “Nurturing other people’s ideas and passions is key to our long-term survival. There’s only so much I can do or get done.”
The Calculus investment does not have a time limit, but the aim is a third-party acquisition of Riff Raff, says Jackson.
Of the producers with whom Law has worked over the years, he cites Element Films’ Ed Guiney, and the late Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella as people whose producing style he admires. “There was such a familial, inclusive warmth to the way Sydney and Anthony operated,” says Law, who starred in Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain, both produced by Pollack and Minghella’s Mirage Enterprises. “It was the first time I recognised just what a team effort filmmaking was.”
Key personnel: Jude Law, Ben Jackson, founders and producers; Stephen Fuss, CEO; Katie Sinclair, head of development; Lionelle Galloppa, development executive.
Incoming: Sharon Horgan’s first feature screenplay, a drama about a couple set in contemporary London in which Law will star. The project, which has the working title of 25 Scenes, is now out to a female co-star and a director. Law has a window in summer 2026 to shoot the film.
The Whole World Is Watching is based on a script by Challengers and Queer writer Justin Kuritzkes. Set in the US in 1968, it is a drama that takes place against the backdrop of the debates between writers Gore Vidal and William F Buckley Jr. Law will star in the film which is inspired by the Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville’s 2015 documentary Best Of Enemies, to which Law bought the feature adaptation rights.
Head of development Sinclair’s relationship with writers has yielded scripts from Joe Hampson (Feelgood) and Laura Carreira (On Falling), while Malcolm Campbell is writing a script called Volatiles based on a piece of IP acquired by Riff Raff about the true story of a woman called Joy Milne who realised she could smell Parkinson’s when her husband was diagnosed with the disease. She is now developing a test for it with Manchester University.
The goal is to make projects that do not involve Law as an actor. “We always knew he would be leading us out of the gate, but now we feel we are out of the gate,” as Jackson puts it. “We’re not just a vehicle for Jude, we’re not one at all. He doesn’t need one in order to work. He does it because he loves it.”
One of those projects will be the next film from US director India Donaldson, whose debut feature Good One was at Sundance and Cannes in 2024. She is writing and directing Fireworks Every Night, set in 1990s Florida, based on a novel of the same name.
And Jackson has originated a feature idea he pitched to The Order and Black Rabbit co-creators Zach Baylin and Kate Susman, a “90-minute thrill ride” in the spirit of the tight, muscular films of the 1970s and 80s. “It’s about a retired getaway driver who thinks he’s done, but he has to do one more job, and get from A to B to C,” Jackson explains. “Obviously, it doesn’t go according to plan.”
TV projects include a series about two female detectives, being developed with the BBC, and a script by Whit Anderson based on Ellory Lloyd’s novella ‘The Club’ about the wealthy members of a private club who start dying off, for Hulu.
Jude Law says: “The most important element of the job I do at the company is to encourage and to enable other people. I don’t know how to line produce, I don’t know how to design a film, I don’t know how to write a film. But I know people who do. I like them and I believe in them, and I like to be able to put them in a situation where they can do their job.
”The next step, and what could be the most exciting step, is attaching actors and directors to these projects who are inspired and excited by the projects in the same way that I am and allowing them to lead the piece.”
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