The Number 44, a new production company co-founded by director/producer Ben Charles Edwards alongside Goldfinch, has revealed its first greenlit curated slate of productions due to be completed by the end of 2023.
The Number 44 is currently in post-production with the previously announced project, The Wheels of Heaven, starring Mickey Rourke.
Co-founder Ben Charles Edwards:
“The Number 44 was Co-created by myself and Goldfinch as a standalone production company under the Goldfinch umbrella. We are dedicated to supporting original creators of modern and exciting genre stories that scrutinise human behaviour or pose a moral conundrum in their telling. The company takes its name from the fictional character in Mark Twain’s “The Mysterious Stranger” with both touching on the ambiguity of good and evil.
“Our carefully curated slate represents 18 months of solid development by the team and we are excited to bring these productions to life for a global audience in a way that is rarely done so in the UK.”
All Cats are Black at Night, written by Nat Saunders & James Serafinowicz (Sick Note – Netflix) is one of the first titles. Candi is an influencer. Her life is spent creating picture-perfect posts about her life, her cute twin toddlers, her loving husband, and all the gifted merch that adorns their wonderful home. The reality behind this facade is quite different: her marriage is on the rocks, she has a difficult relationship with her teenage daughter, and she’s in a constant struggle to keep the likes coming in and her follower count rising, whilst her bitter rivals seem to be leaving her in her wake. And that’s when it happens: a rival influencer is violently murdered, her dismembered remains posted on her socials for everyone to see.
I’ll Play Mother, directed by Brad Watson (Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop), is a twisted psychological horror about the relentless and unending paranoia of parenthood and the lengths people will go to create the family they believe they deserve.
Michelle and Asif have spent the past two years having every minute detail of their personal lives inspected, dissected and judged. At last, they have been cleared for adoption and are entering the family finding phase. Unfortunately, it is not as fulfilling as they had hoped it would be, for they are plagued by the old wounds, past traumas and disagreements which sullied the journey to get there. Then they meet the orphaned children and, for a while, it looks as though everything might finally be falling into place.
This halcyon phase comes under threat when the youngest child, pining for his dead mother, fashions a life-sized ‘Pretend Mummy’ from objects he finds in storage. Under the watchful eye of their assigned social worker, and the unblinking face of the mannequin, the couple’s relationship begins to fracture. Unexplained bruises begin to appear on the children’s bodies and questions surrounding the death of the children’s birth mother begin to surface, suspicions are cast over the entire family and what they have or have not done to be together.
The Album, written and directed by Fitch/Baker, is a claustrophobic and chilling horror set in the 1970s, with a cast of four and a contained rural location. The story deals with themes of solitude, ego, creativity and jealousy, and explores what each of us can become if our darker sides aren’t kept in check.
The Tangle, written by Libby Adam & Justin Robertson, and based on the best-selling novel by Justin Robertson, is a hallucinogenic journey into a universe both familiar and profoundly strange. A multi-episodic encounter with dark forces lurking in the woods and what occurs when humanity stumbles into the roots. The Tangle is J.G. Ballard meets Hammer House of Horror with a nod to the Tales of the Unexpected, part Midwich Cuckoos part Black Mirror, it is a hauntological adventure that, though often horrifying, has a dark humour underpinning the suspense. Like Stranger Things, the Tangle resonates a whole world of mysterious forces that interact with our desires as well as our fears and our follies, with often horrifying consequences.
The Number 44 has also been greenlit to produce a 6-episode podcast from Libby Adam called Hell Inc., a dark comedy in which the underworld is in crisis mode. Much like planet Earth, overpopulation is ravaging the finite resources of Hell. Punishments aren’t being carried out, sentences aren’t being served, torture has all but ceased and the Devil has found himself facing the greatest threat to the afterlife the universe has ever known.
These productions are in addition to the Ten Minutes of Terror podcast series, previously announced with podcast production company Stak, to be released later this year. The team are also in development on Jackie the Ripper, which the company optioned from Stak.
