FABLE PICTURES, established in 2016 is a multi-award-winning production company focused on prestige film and television, and telling primarily female-driven stories.
This autumn sees the release of Fable TV Mr Loverman for BBC One, adapted from the novel by Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo, starring Lennie James, Sharon D Clarke and Ariyon Bakare. Mr Loverman premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and will broadcast on BBC One from October 14th. In 2023 they made two series of the Channel 4 multi-BAFTA nominated comedy Hullraisers set in Hull about a multigenerational family.
Fable’s films include Rocks (2019) directed by Sarah Gavron, Wild Rose (2018) starring Jessie Buckley, and Stan & Ollie (2018) starring Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly, which all have garnered awards and nominations from BAFTA, BIFA and the Golden Globes.
Faye Ward and Hannah Farrell, Creative Directors of Fable Pictures, previously produced acclaimed works such as Suffragette, Jane Eyre, Tamara Drewe, Toast, the Golden Globe-nominated series Dancing on the Edge.
FAYE WARD
Creative Director / Founder
Faye founded Fable Pictures in 2016 after the success of Suffragette, starring Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Sarah Gavron. Before founding Fable, Faye was also part of the producing team of Left Bank Pictures’ multi-award winning series The Crown.
Under the Fable banner, Faye has produced Stan & Ollie, for which she was BAFTA nominated. The film stars John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan, who were respectively Golden Globe and BAFTA nominated for their performances. It was written by Jeff Pope (Philomena, Little Boy Blue) and directed by Jon S. Baird (Filth) for eOne and BBC Films.
Next up was Wild Rose starring Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters and Sophie Okenedo, written by Nicole Taylor (Three Girls) and directed by Tom Harper (War & Peace, Peaky Blinders) for eOne, BFI, Creative Scotland and Film4. The film premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in 2018 to rave reviews and was nominated for 10 BIFAs in 2019, winning Best Music. Jessie Buckley was BAFTA nominated for her performance and won Breakthrough Performance at the Hollywood Critics Association awards in 2020. The original song ‘Glasgow’ made the Best Original Song Oscar shortlist 2020. The film also scored a hat-trick at BAFTA Scotland awards 2019 for Best Actress (Jessie Buckley), Best Feature Film, and Best Writer (Nicole Taylor). The same year, Jon S. Baird won Best Director for Stan & Ollie.
Rocks, the latest film from Faye’s long-standing partnership with director Sarah Gavron, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and London Film Festival in Autumn 2019. Uniquely crafted by an all-female creative team in collaboration with mostly first-time actors, Rocks was written by award-winning playwright Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson (Gangs of London, The Little Drummer Girl), the film has garnered critical acclaim, and will be released in UK cinemas in Autumn 2020.
Faye previously spent many years at Ruby Film & Television alongside Alison Owen, where she worked across the slate, producing the BBC’s Golden Globe nominated TV series Dancing on the Edge, written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jacqueline Bisset, as well as the BBC One adaptation of Nigel Slater’s memoir Toast starring Helena Bonham Carter and Freddie Highmore, written by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot, War Horse) and directed by S.J. Clarkson (Collateral, Jessica Jones). Faye was also part of the producing team on Brick Lane, starring Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik and Christopher Simpson; the first collaboration of many with Sarah Gavron and writer Abi Morgan.
Her other credits while at Ruby include Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, starring Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska and written by Moira Buffini, for Focus Features and BBC Films; Double Lesson starring Phil Davis, written by George Kay, for Channel 4; Stephen Frear’s Tamara Drewe, starring Gemma Arterton and written by Moira Buffini; The Other Boleyn Girl, starring Natalie Portmann and Scarlet Johansson, written by Peter Morgan, and directed by Justin Chadwick; Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Five Minutes of Heaven, starring Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt, written by Guy Hibbert; and the multi-award-winning BBC One adaptation of Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island, starring Naomie Harris, David Oyelowo, Ruth Wilson, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ashley Walters, written by Sarah Williams and Paula Milne, and directed by John Alexander.
Faye was the recipient of the ENVY Producer Award at the 2019 Women in Film and Television Awards, as well as the winner of last year’s Hospital Club’s h100 Film Award. This year she was invited to join the US’ Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
HANNAH FARRELL
Creative Director
Hannah Farrell joined Fable as Creative Partner in 2018. Hannah began her career in development in 2000 when she joined Working Title Films as a Development Assistant working on films such as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (directed by Edgar Wright, starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost).
Several years later, Hannah joined Ruby Films as Head of Development where she built a slate of projects under their first-look deal with Film4 and Miramax. She worked across a number of projects including Chatroom, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Imogen Poots (directed by Hideo Nakata, written by Enda Walsh); Stephen Frears’ Tamara Drewe starring Gemma Arterton, written by Moira Buffini; Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre starring Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska, written by Moira Buffini; Saving Mr Banks starring Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson (directed by John Lee Hancock, written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith); and Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette with Carey Mulligan, Meryl Streep and Helena Bonham Carter, and written by Abi Morgan. She also developed SJ Clarkson's Toast, starring Freddie Highmore and Helena Bonham Carter, written by Lee Hall, and Case Histories for BBC One, starring Jason Isaacs, Amanda Abbington and Zawe Ashton.
In 2015 Hannah joined Origin Pictures, where she headed up both the TV and Film division, overseeing development of projects including BBC1’s hit show The Woman in White (starring Jessie Buckley, Olivia Vinall and Dougray Scott, written by Wilkie Collins and Fiona Seres, and directed by Carl Tibbetts).
HANNAH PRICE
Head of Development
Hannah has been part of the Fable Pictures team since the founding of the company. Prior to Fable, Hannah worked as a Development Assistant at Film4 and then with the acclaimed BAFTA-nominated director Yann Demange (Top Boy, ’71, White Boy Rick). As a freelance script and book reader she has worked for Studio Canal, Pinewood Pictures, Eleven Film and the Channel 4 Screenwriting Competition. She previously assisted producer Rosa Bosch for 5 years across a range of documentaries and video art projects and on the festival launch of a number of feature films including Alice Rohrwacher’s debut Corpo Celeste in Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. She has produced a handful of drama and documentary shorts that have screened at Raindance, the London Short Film Festival and Underwire Film Festival.
CAROLINE HARVEY
Executive Producer
Caroline brought her television project JOAN AND JACKIE to Fable in 2018 and joined the team permanently in 2019 to work as a producer across TV & Film.
Caroline began her career as a development assistant at Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack’s production company, Mirage Enterprises in 2001. She spent many years helping to build a slate of projects under their first-look deal with Miramax / Weinstein Co. She was promoted to Head of Development in 2004 and worked on a number of projects including Cold Mountain (starring Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, written and directed by Anthony Minghella); The Interpreter (starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, directed by Sydney Pollack); Michael Clayton (starring George Clooney, written and directed by Tony Gilroy.) She also developed Alexander McCall Smith’s The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency, starring Jill Scott and Lucian Msamati and went on to script edit the television series for HBO (written by Minghella, Richard Curtis, Robert Jones and Nicholas Wright).
She was BAFTA nominated for producing Sam Taylor-Johnson’s first narrative film, Love You More. She has produced, written and directed a handful of award winning shorts that have screened at Cannes, Tribeca, Raindance and London Film Festival.
Caroline went on to be a development executive at Working Title where she worked across the film slate on projects including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Les Miserables and Bridget Jones’ Baby.
She went freelance in 2013 and began to develop her own slate of passion projects - while working part-time on material for Origin Pictures, Sally Greene (Old Vic Theatre) and Arrow Media. In 2016 she spent 2 years working closely with the Oscar nominated writer / director Tobias Lindholm on a project about the late war reporter, Marie Colvin.
CLAIRE CAMPBELL
Head of Production
Claire joined Fable as Head of Production in January 2019 following a period of 8 years working as a freelance Production Manager and Line Producer. During 2017, Claire met and worked as the Production Manager with Fable to help produce Wild Rose in Scotland, London and Nashville. Most recently she worked on Military Wives, starring Kristin Scott Thomas, based on the true story of the Military Wives Choir who went to claim the Christmas Number 1 in 2012 and became a worldwide phenomenon. Other film credits have included The Wife with Golden Globe winner Glenn Close & T2 Trainspotting with Danny Boyle and his producing team in Scotland. From October 2017 and into 2018, Claire worked on Curfew, an 8-part series for Sky 1. Racing their way free, competitors take part in an illegal car race traversing the UK over the course of 1 night to win a prize to escape the clutches of an infected Britain. The project required two full units (main and action) shooting over 20 weeks across the UK. Claire started her career working on commercials.
CLARK CREWE
Operations Manager
Having joined Fable Pictures at its conception, Clark oversees all film and TV productions, business affairs and operational functions of the company. Recent projects include Stan and Ollie and Wild Rose which have their world premieres at London and Toronto Film Festival respectively, and Sarah Gavron’s Rocks. During five years of freelance production prior to joining Fable, he worked across a diverse range of films including Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl (starring Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander), Our Kind Of Traitor (starring Stellan Skarsgård and Naomie Harris, written by Hossein Amini, directed by Susanna White), and Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest (starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, and Naoko Mori, written by Simon Beaufoy and William Nicholson).
OLLIE SWETENHAM
Development Coordinator
Ollie joined Fable in January 2020, providing day-to-day support to the development team. Ollie graduated with a BA in English in 2018, and was offered a place on the Carnival Films Runners Scheme, working there for 7 months. Following this, he interned at Peters Fraser & Dunlop before working at Love Productions as their Reception Runner.
JO WHITE
Finance Controller
Jo has been working in the Film & TV sector for more than 20 years. Jo began her career at Accountant’s Cape & Dalgleish (now part of Grant Thornton) where she specialised in audit & consultancy services within the media sector. Jo then moved into industry working freelance for TV & Film production companies providing finance support and reporting to boards from start-ups to the more the well-established companies.
