Jeremy Thomas, one of the UK’s most prominent independent film producers of the last 50 years, died on September 11. He was 77 years old.
His family announced his death in a statement on Saturday.
“Jeremy Thomas, the celebrated British producer of The Last Emperor and of over 40 other films, has died, at the age of 77,” it reads. “Thomas passed away peacefully at his country home in Oxfordshire late on Friday 11th, surrounded by his family and loved ones.”
Thomas racked up more than 80 credits over his career including Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning The Last Emperor, Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast and David Cronenberg’s Crash.
News of Thomas’ death broke on the final day of the 83rd Venice Film Festival, featuring Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard in the main competition on which Thomas was a producer.
At the festival press conference last week, Herzog credited Thomas for coming up with the idea of casting Kate and Rooney Mara in the lead roles of two sisters who act and speak as one at heart of the drama, enabling him to move on with the 40-year gestated project.
Thomas also appeared as interviewee in Luca Guadagnino’s seven-hour documentary Joie de Vivre. Notes, Thoughts, Words, Reflections, Faces, And Visions Concerning Bernardo Bertolucci And The Cinephilia Of The 20th Century That No Longer Exists, with Hanway Films, the sales company he owned for decades before it was sold to Charles Cohen, taking on sales ahead of its Venice premiere.
Thomas was born on July 26, 1949, into a filmmaking family. His father directed more than 40 features including classics such as The 39 Steps and many of the pictures in the comedic Doctor franchise, while his uncle Gerald Thomas was known for the Carry On films.
After school, he took various jobs in the film industry, eventually moving into editing to take assistant editor credits on films such as The Harder They Come and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and first assistant editor on Ken Loach’s A Family Life.
He moved into producing in 1974 with the Australia-shot feature Mad Dog Morgan, starring Dennis Hopper.
Shortly after, he founded the London-based independent production house, Recorded Picture Company (RPC), kicking off its activities with Jerzy Skolimowski’s The Shout, which won the Grand Prix de Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978. He would go on to found production and foreign sales company Hanway Films in 1998 with Peter Watson and Stephan Mallmann.
Early highlights of his prolific career included Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), starring David Bowie as a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp; Nicolas Roeg’s Bad Timing (1983) and Eureka (1984) and Insignificance (1985) and Stephen Frears’ The Hit.
A crowning achievement was Bertolucci’s epic independently-financed picture The Last Emperor, which took three years to make and went on to win nine Oscars in 1987 and become a commercial success.
Thomas would continue to work with Bertolucci, producing The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1992), Stealing Beauty (1996) and The Dreamers (2003).
One of his most talked about productions was David Cronenberg’s 1996 adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash, which sparked a backlash when it world premiered in Cannes in 1996 and then became mired in a censorship battle.
The Cannes habitué Thomas was also the subject of a documentary, Mark Cousins’s The Storms Of Jeremy Thomas, in which the writer and director accompanied the producer on his annual pilgrimage to the festival.
In an interview with Deadline’s Disruptors magazine ahead of the film’s premiere in Cannes in 2021, Thomas said there were a number of Ballard books he still wanted to adapt, but added, “My time is limited”.
Thomas was a revered and widely beloved figure in the global film business, as passionate and knowledgeable a film producer as you could find, and someone for whom cinema was far more than a career. It was a way of life. This was never truer than during his annual pilgrimage to the Cannes Film Festival, where he launched so many films. He would set off from London in an old motor car — another of his passions — and drive down to the Riviera, often with friends including Luc Roeg, son of Nicolas Roeg.
In Cannes, Thomas would do his business from the same Carlton suite, a stage he occupied for decades, entertaining the great and the good of the film business.
Thomas was also known for throwing great parties in Soho, the area he made his home for so many years out of his famous HanWay street office. He was widely known for being a gentleman, a shrewd businessman, a true film lover and someone who made cinema his life.
“Based in London throughout his career, but a dedicated internationalist in taste and temperament, Thomas worked with directors from all over the world (Japan, Italy, Germany, the USA, Canada, Poland, Australia),” read the statement announcing Thomas’ death.
“He was celebrated by them as a dedicated enabler of auteur work at the highest level. He received an Outstanding European Achievement in World Cinema awar from the European Film Academy in 2006,” it continued.
“The roll call of international directors includes: Bernardo Bertolucci, David Cronenberg, Matteo Garrone, Jerzy Skolimowski, Nagisa Oshima, Richard Linklater, Bob Rafelson, Jim Jarmusch, Takeshi Miike, Terry Gilliam. But he was also instrumental in fostering the early careers of many great British directors, producing highly ambitious work: from Jonathan Glazer, Stephen Frears, Julien Temple, Ben Wheatley and David Mackenzie. He was working to the last – his latest collaboration with Takeshi Miike premieres in Toronto on Monday — the 14th September.”
Miike’s Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo is world premiering as a Special Presentation. Further upcoming films include Becoming Capa, which is currently in post-production.
In his later years, Thomas suffered from cancer but continued to work tirelessly. He was married twice, first to Claudia Frohlich (m. 1977; div. 1981) and then to Eski Thomas née Vivien Coughman in 1982. He is survived by his wife and three children, Jessica, film and TV agent Jack, and Joshua.
Andreas Wiseman contributed to this report.
English (US) ·