EXCLUSIVE: Cameras are rolling on Epic — The Life & Occasions of David Lean, with Assemble Media boarding the documentary.
The Sky Arts function comes from director Barnaby Thompson (Mad Concerning the Boy — The Noel Coward Story), with Embankment Films and Fragile Films now joined by Assemble’s Jack Heller (Moviepass, Moviecrash) on the manufacturing and financing.
Assemble’s Caitlin de Lisser-Ellen as an government producer. Embankment’s Nick Taussig is the producer, with the corporate behind The Father and The Spouse additionally purchasing the doc internationally.
A spring 2026 theatrical launch date has been slated within the UK, with Sky Arts transmitting it over the summer season. We first reported on the undertaking in September last year.
“I’m thrilled to hitch Barnaby and Nick on this journey,” mentioned Heller, founding father of Assemble. “With IMAX and large-format filmmaking shaping the way forward for cinema, there’s no higher time to discover the lifetime of the person who redefined epic filmmaking and laid the groundwork for it.”
The movie appears into the lifetime of British director David Lean, whose movies included Lawrence of Arabia, Physician Zhivago and A Bridge of the River Kwai. By means of collaboration with the British Movie Institute Nationwide Archive, which holds a trove of David Lean paperwork in its Particular Collections vault, the movie comprises never-before-seen archive and contributors from main movie administrators.
Per the synopsis: “Haunted by the shadow of his dismissive father and his puritan upbringing, David Lean made among the most stunning and profitable movies of all time. Married six occasions, he created layered and complicated narratives in his work, whereas struggling to seek out connection and that means in his private life. He outlined the epic, and it was by way of his work that he discovered that means, function and contentment. It was as if he lived for his movies and nothing else.”
“The epic high quality and energy of David Lean’s movies outline the cinematic canvass on which all different nice movies are measured,” mentioned Jack Oliver, Head of Co-Productions at Sky. “The chance to bask in the fantastic thing about Lean’s movies and discover the complexity of the person is massively interesting within the imaginative and prescient Barnaby Thompson shared in regards to the undertaking. Sky is happy by the chance of working once more with Embankment movies, we share the identical ethos and ambition in cinematic function documentaries of iconic figures and getting the story behind the story.”
