Fifth Season Buys ‘A Thousand Blows’ Producer Story Collective; Co-Founders Simon Vaughan & Helen Jackson Exiting

Fifth Season has bought The Story Collective to bolster its UK production offering.

Fifth Season backed the A Thousand Blows producer with minority investment when it launched in 2021 and is turning that backing into full acquisition this week.

As part of the sale, Story Collective co-founder Simon Vaughan is leaving to launch a new studio and Helen Jackson is stepping down. Their fellow co-founder Damian Keogh is staying on and has also become Fifth Season’s SVP, Managing Director, International Scripted. A consolidated senior leadership team — including The Story Collective’s Elouise West and Natasha Neill and Fifth Season’s Charlotte Bloxham — will now collaborate across both slates, leading on business affairs, finance and production respectively from Fifth Season’s London office.

The Story Collective produces Steven Knight’s Disney+ boxing drama A Thousand Blows, which is into its second season. The company also has creative partnerships with Tom Davis and James de Frond’s Mighty Pebble Pictures, and Ben Donald’s Cosmopolitan Pictures.

Vaughan, Keogh’s co-founder, is launching Storyworks, which has stuck a first-look deal with Fifth Season and will work alongside The Story Collective on some pre-existing projects. Storyworks will “build high profile scripted productions from LA and London,” Fifth Season said. We have asked Fifth Season is anyone else has left The Story Collective.

Fifth Season boss Graham Taylor said: “The Story Collective was built by Damian, Simon, and Helen on an ethos of creative collaboration, which we backed and have admired from its inception – and it feels like a natural evolution to be consolidating in this way four years later, as we double down on our ambitions as a UK studio. Fifth Season’s offering now has even greater firepower, and an undeniable nexus of talent connections and projects to put our weight behind.”

Keogh said the move is an “exciting and natural next step,” while Vaughan added that it will “help deliver the scaled enterprise we all set out to build together.”