Cassandra Carias joins Business Affairs team in second key hire.

Film4 today announced two new senior appointments to their team:

Ollie Madden will join as Head of Creative, moving from his current Executive Producer role at Kudos. One of the most respected production executives in the UK, with over 15 years’ experience of all aspects of production and development from both the UK independent sector and the studio system, he replaces Rose Garnett, who recently left the organisation to head up BBC Films. Madden's career spans production and development across both TV and film, encompassing spells at Warner Bros, Intermedia and Miramax before he joined Kudos as Head of Film in 2011. His credits include Spooks: The Greater Good, the Sherlock Holmes franchise, Magicians and BBC1 mini-series Gunpowder from writer Ronan Bennett, which recently finished shooting. His appointment follows an extensive search for candidates for the role by executive recruitment firm Mission Bay.

Cassandra Carias joins Film4’s Business Affairs team in August, moving from eOne Features where she is Head of Legal & Business Affairs. She replaces former head of finance Harry Dixon, who left Film4 in March to join House Productions. Before joining eOne, Carias was at Harbottle and Lewis for 14 years, rising from trainee to senior associate, advising clients from all sectors of the industry on film development, production, financing and exploitation, and including an 18 month secondment to Working Title Films. She has worked on films including Eye in the Sky, Les Miserables, The Theory of Everything and the upcoming Stan & Ollie.

Director of Film4 Daniel Battsek commented: “We are delighted to welcome two such brilliant and well respected individuals to the immensely talented Film4 team. I have long been an admirer of Ollie's skills and am thrilled to have his depth and range of experience on board heading up our creative team. Cassandra comes with such an impressive wealth of knowledge and understanding of our business, and will be a huge asset as we navigate the changing landscape of film finance and distribution models.”

Ollie Madden comments: “I’m sad to be leaving my wonderful colleagues at Kudos, and many beloved projects, but the opportunity to go back into film full time and join Daniel, Sue and the brilliant team at Film4, at a time when they’re working with some of the best talent around, was too good an opportunity to pass up. I’ve had a creative crush on Film4’s output from my earliest days in the business, and it will be a real privilege to be involved in the kind of daring, innovative films they have long been associated with. I can’t wait to get started.”

Cassandra Carias comment added : "The team at eOne have been fantastic colleagues, and I’ve enjoyed the breadth of my role and their slate hugely. I'm excited to now join Film4, which is such a revered bastion of the British film industry. Stepping into Harry's role offers a rare chance to bring business affairs and finance together. I look forward to working alongside Film4’s highly respected team to support talented filmmakers in bringing their visions to the screen."

Madden inherits a development slate that includes new work from Kevin Macdonald, William Oldroyd, Sarah Gavron, John Crowley, Peter Strickland, Coky Giedroyc, Babak Anvari, Tobias Lindholm, Rachel Tunnard, Sean Durkin and Iain Morris, as well as films in production or post-production from Martin McDonagh, Steve McQueen, Andrew Haigh, Mike Leigh, Asif Kapadia, Clio Barnard, Lenny Abrahamson, Tom Harper, Bart Layton, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sebastián Lelio, Stephen Merchant, Michael Pearce and Lynne Ramsay.

Madden and Carias join on the back of a great first half of 2017 for Film4, following confirmation that the annual budget increase to £25 million announced in 2016 would be maintained for 2017, T2 Trainspotting grossing over £16 million at the UK box office, and four Film4 films being selected for the Cannes Film Festival, which awarded prizes to Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here and Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer.