Life & Soul is a film and TV production company with an emphasis on highest quality projects from around the globe. With a presence in London and New York City, we actively develop and produce material for both the cinema and the small screen. Life & Soul is especially fond of great stories that promote positive values. With a background in production, directing, finance and business, the management team has pioneered a new model for development financing which allows it to quickly fund and develop new projects.
Development
We acquire intellectual property and develop our own work in-house. Our talented pool of writers include numerous Oscar and BAFTA winners.
Financing
The Life & Soul team features three decades of finance experience. We have created a variety of innovative development financing solutions for our own capital and outside investors.
Production
We work with projects from idea to packaging, financing and production stage. We partner with many distributors and studios to get our product on screen.
Our Development Slate
Heart of a Soldier
Director: James Kent
Writer: Christopher Hampton
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Heart of a Soldier
Heart Of A Soldier is the true-life story of two soldiers, one British and one American, who fought together in Vietnam, forging a lifelong friendship. After their military careers ended they used their leadership skills and experience to try and prevent one of the darkest hours of American history.
It is a celebration of courage and heroism whose final chapter takes place on 11 September 2001, when the Rick Rescorla, Brit among the two, saved the lives of 2700 people in the World Trade Center, only to give up his own…
SIR CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON / writer
Prodigiously talented Sir Christopher Hampton is one of the most respected British writers. He has won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for the film Dangerous Liaisons (dir. Stephen Frears, starring John Malkovich, Glenn Close) and another Oscar nomination for his film Atonement (dir. Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy). His plays, musicals, and translations have garnered four Tony Awards and three Olivier Awards.
JAMES KENT / director
James Kent has an impressive reputation within the British film industry. Throughout his work, both in film and TV he has worked on many great stories with top-tier actors. Amongst others, his directing credits include TV series Mother Father Son (starring Richard Gere), films Testament of Youth (starring Kit Harington, Taron Egerton) and The Aftermath (starring Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård).
JINA JAY / casting director
Jina Jay is an esteemed British casting director. Some of her extraordinary work includes Dune (dir. Denis Villeneuve, staring Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson), Rogue One (dir. Gareth Edwards, starring Felicity Jones), The Grand Budapest Hotel (dir. Wes Anderson, starring Ralph Fiennes), Bird Box (dir. Susanne Bier, starring Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich), A Private War (dir. Matthew Heineman, starring Rosamund Pike) and Black Mirror (dir. David Slade, starring Fionn Whitehead).
Little Red Dog
Director: TBA
Writer: Adam Cooper
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Little Red Dog
An aging but formidable strip club owner, Claudiu “Manco” Kapak, is robbed by a masked gunman as he places his cash receipts in a bank’s night-deposit box. Enraged, he sends out half a dozen security men to find the witless culprit. Their search leads them to Joe Carver, an innocent but hardly defenseless newcomer who evades capture and sets out to make Kapak wish he’d targeted someone else.
Meanwhile, the real burglar, Jefferson Davis Falkins, and his new girlfriend Carrie seem to believe they’ve found a whole new profession: robbing Manco Kapak.
ADAM COOPER / writer
Adam Cooper is an LA-based writer who throughout his career worked with major film studios on blockbuster productions. He wrote Exodus: Gods and Kings (dir. Ridley Scott, starring Christian Bale), Divergent Series: Allegiant (dir. Robert Schwantke, starring Naomi Watts), Assasin’s Creed (dir. Justin Kurzel, starring Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons) and Tower Heist (dir. Brett Ratner, starring Eddie Murphy, Casey Affleck).
MARK FASANO / co-producer
Mark Fasano is a Partner and President of Production at Nickel City Pictures in Los Angeles. He has executive produced a number of films such as American Ultra (dir. Nima Nourizadeh, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart), Mother’s Day (dir. Garry Marshall, starring Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson, Julia Roberts), Lessons in Love (dir. Tom Vaughan, starring Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek, Jessica Alba). Before joining Nickel City he was exec at PalmStar Media.
VISHAL RUNGTA / co-producer
Vishal is a Partner and the Co-CEO of Nickel City Pictures. Prior to Nickel City, Vishal was Partner and COO for PalmStar Media. His producing credits include Collateral Beauty (dir. David Frankel, starring Will Smith, Kate Winslet), The November Man (dir. Roger Donaldson, starring Pierce Brosnan) and Pawn Star (dir. Edward Zwick, staring Tobey Maguire).
MR Ping Pong
Director: TBA
Writer: John Boorman, Martyn Auty
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Mr Ping Pong
How an eccentric English aristocrat, Ivor Montagu, went to China in the harshest days of the Cold War and was commissioned to bring China in from the cold by helping them to become world champions at table tennis.
Dubbed ‘Mr Ping Pong’ by Mao Zedong, no less, Montagu wheeled and dealed to pull off their famous victory in 1961 Beijing and so paved the way for ‘Ping Ping Diplomacy’ whereby US President Nixon famously met Chairman Mao and Zhou Enlai thanks to the ice-breaking visit of the US table tennis team, engineered by Ivor Montagu.
JOHN BOORMAN / writer
Legendary 5-times Oscar nominee John Boorman is amongst most respected filmmakers in world. He was nominated for Academy Award for his films Hope and Glory, Deliverance (starring Burt Reynolds) and Excalibur (Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren).
MARTYN AUTY / writer
Matyn Auty has produced a number of prime time dramas for ITV in the UK (Heartbeat, A Touch of Frost, PD James Mysteries) as well as creating his own one-off films for BBC (A Foreign Field, Soul Survivors) through Trisquare, a company based at Pinewood Studios.
Rites of Passage
Director: Anca Miruna Lazarescu
Writer: O'Neil Sharma
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Rites of Passage
Rites of Passage is the story of Arif, a young Afghan refugee, who arrives in Germany, with nothing but his passion for cricket. “Wrong place to pitch up” is what everyone will tell him, as football-crazy Germany has no concept of cricket.
But then Arif meets Brian, head of the German Cricket Federation. The two join forces and build up a national German cricket league, which continuously grows due to the large influx of refugees from ‘cricket nations’. Arif makes his way through adolescence in a strange country, meets his first love and faces difficulties with people in his surroundings – and emerges a champion,
O’NEIL SHARMA / writer
O’Neil Sharma started his career working as an assistant director for some of the most acclaimed directors. His credits include working on films such as Valkyrie (dir. Bryan Singer), The Last Station (dir. Michael Hoffman) and Inglourious Basterds (dir. Quentin Tarantino). In recent years he shifted into screenwriting and delivered the script for Endless, co-produced by Basil Iwanyk (Sicario, John Wick, The Town).
GABRIELA BACHER / co-producer
Based out of Los Angeles and Berlin, Gabriela Bacher has been working as a producer and executive on both sides of the Atlantic. As MD of Summerstorm Entertainment her recent credits include Endless starring Alexandra Shipp and Nicholas Hamilton; Julien Landais’ The Aspern Papers starring Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson and Jonathan Rhys Meyers; and Matthew Ross’ Siberia starring Keanu Reeves.
Funne - Sea Dreaming Girls
Director: TBA
Writer: Katia Bernardi
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Funne - Sea Dreaming Girls
In Caldbeck, a small mountain village in the North of England, a group of grannies in their seventies are planning a special trip. Almost none of them have ever been at the sea, and they want to see it for the first time. But they need the money to fund their journey.
Based on award-winning documentary – FUNNE is a warm, funny and heart-breaking story about our dreams.
KATIA BERNARDI / writer
Katia Bernardi studied history of film at DAMS in Bologna. In 2004 founded the production company KR Movie, based in Italy. She writes and directs both for cinema and television media. Her documentaries have competed in several international film festival and have been broadcasted on italian and international channels. Her last award winning film, Uomini della luce (Men of the Light), based on footage shot by Ermanno Olmi and Dino Risi, takes place in the same Daone Valley as Funne, and is the starting point of a deep anthropological and social inquiry on the isolated alpine population.
Last Resort
Director: TBA
Writer: David Quantick
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Last Resort
The Last Resort is an account of a white farming family and their black workers’ struggle to survive amidst the craziness and predation of the Mugabe land grab in Zimbabwe. In an African country where life is cheap and chaos is king, the family and their workers pull together to form a unexpected close, familial bond.
They survive together by adapting to the times, using increasingly bizarre and comic means, such as hiring out their cottage as a party venue for the same corrupt officials who are trying to dispossess them.
Who we are
Life & Soul’s founding trio are all history buffs who frequently get inspired by imagining the dramatic potential of real-life events. We seized the opportunity to combine our skills to develop new financing strategies to support a full slate of the film and TV projects.
Mark Bower
Partner; Development
Mark Bower is a US based film producer and private investor.He worked with Bienville Capital as the Head of Emerging Markets.
Bruno Mustic
Partner; Production
Bruno Mustic is a London-based producer. Along with Life&Soul he is working as the Head of Industry at one of the oldest national film festivals - Pula Film Festival.
Bruce Bower
Partner; Finance
Bruce is an investor and non-executive director based in London. After working as a fund manager for many years, he is now a private invesor who helps growing companies.
Mark Bower is a US based film producer and private investor. He worked with Bienville Capital as the Head of Emerging Markets. He is a private investor in over a dozen companies and has produced and developed a number of film projects.
Bruno Mustic is a London-based producer. Along with Life&Soul he is working as the Head of Industry at one of the oldest national film festivals – Pula Film Festival and manages the film festival at the Island of Brac. He has worked on RTL television in Croatia where he earned producing credits on game shows, talk shows, and drama series.
Bruce is an investor and non-executive director based in London. After working as a fund manager for many years, he is now a private investor who helps growing companies in all industries with strategy, financial management, and fundraising. His favorite film is Jean de Florette.