After handing over the reins at Endemol Shine Australia last year, Mark Fennessy has officially launched his next venture, Helium.
The Sydney-based company will comprise three arms – Helium Studios, Helium Pictures and Helium Records – blending the producer’s passions of film/TV and music.
As an independent production label, Helium will have a primary focus on premium scripted and premium factual. Fennessy, who will act as the company’s chief creative officer, tells If his focus is on the “premium, contemporary, noisy, disruptive”.
“Via a growing stable of artists and creative talent, coupled with a unique network of storytellers, writers, and producers, we’re committed to building sustainable and truly rewarding partnerships,” he says.
On the Helium launch slate is the previously announced Last King of the Cross, in pre-production for Paramount+; feature film 6 Festivals, also for Paramount+, and crime thriller series Sex and Thugs and Rock n Roll, in advanced development.
The Sydney-based company will comprise three arms – Helium Studios, Helium Pictures and Helium Records – blending the producer’s passions of film/TV and music.
As an independent production label, Helium will have a primary focus on premium scripted and premium factual. Fennessy, who will act as the company’s chief creative officer, tells If his focus is on the “premium, contemporary, noisy, disruptive”.
“Via a growing stable of artists and creative talent, coupled with a unique network of storytellers, writers, and producers, we’re committed to building sustainable and truly rewarding partnerships,” he says.
On the Helium launch slate is the previously announced Last King of the Cross, in pre-production for Paramount+; feature film 6 Festivals, also for Paramount+, and crime thriller series Sex and Thugs and Rock n Roll, in advanced development.
- 10/6/2021
- by Jackie Keast
- IF.com.au
Mark and Carl Fennessy.
Endemol Shine Australia co-CEOs Mark and Carl Fennessy are departing after leading the company for 10 years, with chief content officer Peter Newman taking over as CEO.
This follows the $US2.2 billion global takeover of Endemol Shine Group by the European production and distribution giant Banijay Group.
Meanwhile, Rory Callaghan continues as CEO of Banijay-owned Screentime, which is yet to be integrated with Endemol Shine. Its slate includes Sas: Who Dares Wins, Rbt and Anh’s Brush with Fame.
Business partners for 26 years after founding indie producer Crackerjack, the Fennessys say they are looking forward to taking a long break. No date has yet been revealed for the handover to Newman, who joined Shine in 2012 as creative director and was upped to chief content officer in 2018.
Newman has overseen one of the world’s biggest unscripted production slates including MasterChef Australia, Big Brother, Gogglebox Australia, Australian Survivor,...
Endemol Shine Australia co-CEOs Mark and Carl Fennessy are departing after leading the company for 10 years, with chief content officer Peter Newman taking over as CEO.
This follows the $US2.2 billion global takeover of Endemol Shine Group by the European production and distribution giant Banijay Group.
Meanwhile, Rory Callaghan continues as CEO of Banijay-owned Screentime, which is yet to be integrated with Endemol Shine. Its slate includes Sas: Who Dares Wins, Rbt and Anh’s Brush with Fame.
Business partners for 26 years after founding indie producer Crackerjack, the Fennessys say they are looking forward to taking a long break. No date has yet been revealed for the handover to Newman, who joined Shine in 2012 as creative director and was upped to chief content officer in 2018.
Newman has overseen one of the world’s biggest unscripted production slates including MasterChef Australia, Big Brother, Gogglebox Australia, Australian Survivor,...
- 9/22/2020
- by The IF Team
- IF.com.au
Frankie Banali, who played drums on Quiet Riot’s best-selling albums and kept the band going for nearly four decades, died Thursday at the age of 68. He had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer last April. The band’s agent, Mark Hyman, confirmed the news to Rolling Stone.
Banali joined Quiet Riot in 1982, one year before the band released its blockbuster breakthrough album, Metal Health. The singles “Cum On Feel the Noize” and “Metal Health (Bang Your Head)” featured Banali’s hard-hitting drumming, and the group’s mixture of...
Banali joined Quiet Riot in 1982, one year before the band released its blockbuster breakthrough album, Metal Health. The singles “Cum On Feel the Noize” and “Metal Health (Bang Your Head)” featured Banali’s hard-hitting drumming, and the group’s mixture of...
- 8/21/2020
- by Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
(L-r) Richard Lowenstein, his frequent Italian collaborator Domenico Procacci, Laura Paolucci and Sue Murray.
Richard Lowenstein’s Ghost Pictures is collaborating with independent producer Mark Fennessy on a feature documentary on Afl star Dustin Martin and a miniseries based on Billy Thorpe’s first book.
Fennessy acquired the rights to both projects and approached Lowenstein after they worked together on Mystify: Michael Hutchence. Fennessy served as a producer on that film and helped acquire the rights to Inxs’s music.
Both are being developed as co-productions between Fennessy’s production company and Ghost Pictures, in which Lowenstein is partnered with Andrew de Groot and Lynn-Maree Milburn.
Milburn is working on the treatment on the feature doc on the colourful Richmond footballer whose New Zealand-based father Shane Martin, a former high-ranking member of the Rebels motorcycle gang, was refused entry to Australia in February.
“It will be a fascinating story; the treatment reads beautifully,...
Richard Lowenstein’s Ghost Pictures is collaborating with independent producer Mark Fennessy on a feature documentary on Afl star Dustin Martin and a miniseries based on Billy Thorpe’s first book.
Fennessy acquired the rights to both projects and approached Lowenstein after they worked together on Mystify: Michael Hutchence. Fennessy served as a producer on that film and helped acquire the rights to Inxs’s music.
Both are being developed as co-productions between Fennessy’s production company and Ghost Pictures, in which Lowenstein is partnered with Andrew de Groot and Lynn-Maree Milburn.
Milburn is working on the treatment on the feature doc on the colourful Richmond footballer whose New Zealand-based father Shane Martin, a former high-ranking member of the Rebels motorcycle gang, was refused entry to Australia in February.
“It will be a fascinating story; the treatment reads beautifully,...
- 6/24/2020
- by The IF Team
- IF.com.au
A review of tonight's "Fargo" coming up just as soon as I find out if Joan Crawford had crabs... "Do you really think we'll get out of this mess we're in?" -Lou After being alluded to throughout the season's first four episodes, Ronald Reagan finally appears in the fleshy form of Bruce Campbell (who's having himself quite the fall, between this and "Ash vs. Evil Dead"). Reagan — even more than most American presidents of the TV age, given his acting background — is difficult to portray as anything but a caricature, but Campbell is able to get across the essence of the man whom many Americans believed could finally pull the country out of the morass it was in from Vietnam, Watergate, gas lines, and Jimmy Carter's comments about our national malaise. When he busts out his "shining city on a hill" rhetoric (which the real Reagan famously used in...
- 11/10/2015
- by Alan Sepinwall
- Hitfix
Tracy Morgan returned to Saturday Night Live this past weekend for the first time since his debilitating car accident, and it was a glorious thing to behold. Even beyond seeing the former SNL star do comedy again — surrounded at one point, poignantly, by his old 30 Rock castmates — the episode as a whole was a reminder that life is short, and maybe it's better to spend whatever TV time we have left watching people we already know we like. And that includes you, Larry David, who kicked off the show with...
- 10/19/2015
- Rollingstone.com
"Fargo" is back for a new season. I sang the praises of the early episodes last week, and I have specific thoughts on the premiere coming up just as soon as I'm the comic in a piece of bubble gum... "But just watch: this thing's only getting bigger." -Karl With sequels, whether in film or in television, there's an understandable belief that bigger is better. You can't just equal what the audience loved last time; you have to top it, which means more of everything they loved, whether characters (note all the superhero movie sequels that start piling on bad guys), plot twists, explosions, or what have you. And with a few exceptions (notably "The Godfather Part II," which is the exception to many laws of entertainment), they grow so busy with individual things that worked last time that they lose the overall core of why the original was so good.
- 10/13/2015
- by Alan Sepinwall
- Hitfix
Producer David Hannay will be remembered as one of the pioneers of the modern Australian film industry, a passionate cinephile, mentor and loyal friend.
The Nz-born filmmaker whose career spanned seven decades died on Monday, aged 74, after a long battle with cancer.
He entered the film industry at Artransa Park Studios in 1958 as an extras casting assistant on Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.
As a producer and executive producer he was involved in more than 50 film and television productions. His feature film credits include Stone, The Man From Hong Kong, Solo, Death of a Soldier, Emma.s War, Mapantsula, Shotgun Wedding, Gross Misconduct, Dead Funny, Savage Play, Love in Ambush and the feature documentary Stone Forever.
He was Head of Production for Gemini Productions (which merged with the Grundy Organisation in 1977) from 1970 to 1973 and again from 1975 to 1976, and general manager of the Greater Union production subsidiary The...
The Nz-born filmmaker whose career spanned seven decades died on Monday, aged 74, after a long battle with cancer.
He entered the film industry at Artransa Park Studios in 1958 as an extras casting assistant on Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.
As a producer and executive producer he was involved in more than 50 film and television productions. His feature film credits include Stone, The Man From Hong Kong, Solo, Death of a Soldier, Emma.s War, Mapantsula, Shotgun Wedding, Gross Misconduct, Dead Funny, Savage Play, Love in Ambush and the feature documentary Stone Forever.
He was Head of Production for Gemini Productions (which merged with the Grundy Organisation in 1977) from 1970 to 1973 and again from 1975 to 1976, and general manager of the Greater Union production subsidiary The...
- 3/31/2014
- by Don Groves
- IF.com.au
By Allen Gardner
Harold And Maude (Criterion) Hal Ashby’s masterpiece of black humor centers on a wealthy young man (Bud Cort) who’s obsessed with death and the septuagenarian (Ruth Gordon) with whom he finds true love. As unabashedly romantic as it is quirky, with Cat Stevens supplying one of the great film scores of all-time. Fine support from Vivian Pickles, Cyril Cusack, Charles Tyner, and Ellen Geer. Fine screenplay by Colin Higgins. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by Hal Ashby biographer Nick Dawson, producer Charles Mulvehill; Illustrated audio excerpts from seminars by Ashby and Higgins; Interview with Cat Stevens. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo.
In Darkness (Sony) Agnieszka Holland’s Ww II epic tells the true story of a sewer worker and petty thief in Nazi-occupied Poland who single-handedly helped hide a group of Jews in the city’s labyrinthine sewer system for the duration of the war.
Harold And Maude (Criterion) Hal Ashby’s masterpiece of black humor centers on a wealthy young man (Bud Cort) who’s obsessed with death and the septuagenarian (Ruth Gordon) with whom he finds true love. As unabashedly romantic as it is quirky, with Cat Stevens supplying one of the great film scores of all-time. Fine support from Vivian Pickles, Cyril Cusack, Charles Tyner, and Ellen Geer. Fine screenplay by Colin Higgins. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by Hal Ashby biographer Nick Dawson, producer Charles Mulvehill; Illustrated audio excerpts from seminars by Ashby and Higgins; Interview with Cat Stevens. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo.
In Darkness (Sony) Agnieszka Holland’s Ww II epic tells the true story of a sewer worker and petty thief in Nazi-occupied Poland who single-handedly helped hide a group of Jews in the city’s labyrinthine sewer system for the duration of the war.
- 6/5/2012
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
Greig Fraser has taken the Milli Award for Australian Cinematographer of the Year for his work on 2009′s Bright Star, at last Saturday’s Acs National Awards in Adelaide.
Other winners include Dion Beebe for the Us feature Nine, Stephen Windon for The Pacific, and Calvin Gardiner for the dramatised documentary I Spry.
Ron Taylor, Valerie Taylor and Malcolm Richards were inducted into the Acs Hall of Fame. The ceremony was dedicated to the memory of cinematographer and owner of Lemac Film and Digital John Bowring Acs, who passed away last month.
This is the full list of winners:
Student Cinematography
Lonely Chris Miles Gold Award
Experimental & Specialised
Qr National Nathan Tomlinson Award of Distinction
Stop Motion Cinematography
Pascall ‘Pineapple Lumps’ JoAnne Bouzianis-Sellcik Golden Tripod
TV Station Breaks / Promos
Masr elnahrda ‘Egypt Today’ Gamal Elboushi Award of Distinction
Music Clips
Thirsty Merc ‘All My Life’ David Knight Acs Award of...
Other winners include Dion Beebe for the Us feature Nine, Stephen Windon for The Pacific, and Calvin Gardiner for the dramatised documentary I Spry.
Ron Taylor, Valerie Taylor and Malcolm Richards were inducted into the Acs Hall of Fame. The ceremony was dedicated to the memory of cinematographer and owner of Lemac Film and Digital John Bowring Acs, who passed away last month.
This is the full list of winners:
Student Cinematography
Lonely Chris Miles Gold Award
Experimental & Specialised
Qr National Nathan Tomlinson Award of Distinction
Stop Motion Cinematography
Pascall ‘Pineapple Lumps’ JoAnne Bouzianis-Sellcik Golden Tripod
TV Station Breaks / Promos
Masr elnahrda ‘Egypt Today’ Gamal Elboushi Award of Distinction
Music Clips
Thirsty Merc ‘All My Life’ David Knight Acs Award of...
- 5/2/2011
- by Miguel Gonzalez
- Encore Magazine
Spencer Proffer is considered a leader in entertainment, pioneering media integrations before it was fashionable to do so. For example, he produced the Tina Turner Acid Queen album in conjunction with The Who's movie Tommy, her becoming one of the first successful R&B artists to jump genres with a rock album. Long before music and visual marriages became as prevalent as they are today (not counting, of course, music videos, Broadway, etc.), he developed an early computer-animated laser show that played countrywide in planetariums that was centered around "Children Of The Sun," a song he co-wrote and produced with pop-rocker Billy Thorpe. Proffer continued amassing an impressive list of musical credits before exiting his twenties. He went on to serve as a producer or executive or co-executive producer on many films and TV movies such as Gods And Monsters, Shake Rattle...
- 4/14/2010
- by Mike Ragogna
- Huffington Post
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