Script Development
The Idea
Trailer
Finance Development
About the writer (S)
Director: Ben Wheatley
Producers: Claire Jones, Barry Ryan, Andrew Starke
Writers: Ben Wheatley, Amy Jump
What is it? Nearly a year after a botched job, a hitman takes a new assignment with the promise of a big payoff for three killings. What starts off as an easy task soon unravels, sending the killer into the heart of darknes
Funding:
-Film4 Productions (127 Hours, Attack the Block)
-UK Film Council (no longer in working: The Kings Speech)
-Screen Yorkshire (set up by UK Film Council)
Production Studios:
-Rook Films (Sightseers, Kill List, Down Terrace)
-Warp X (This is England: TV+Film)
Budget: £500,000
Ben Wheatley Interview
What do you find the most difficult, what’s the part that you dread the most?
Well the writing is the most difficult, trying to be objective and knowing when things are good or not. You could go 10 years and not get a good word out and that can be awful. You need to physically close your mind to your own work and look at it through fresh eyes.
Co-Writer: Amy Jump (his wife)
Also co-writing his next film Sightseers
In an interview with the films director:
We’re used to seeing hit men in films or books as cold loners. Your hit men aren’t like that—they have girlfriends or wives, they’re personal friends with each other. Where did the idea for Kill List come from?
I think it’s an idea I’d been working on in Down Terrace: looking at genre and then applying real world dynamics to it. Trying to strip it back to something that was a bit more realistic and human, but still retaining that kind of really funky plotting that you get with genre film. You go back to the source, how people interact, what the reality of working with your friend is like no matter what job it is—looking at that rather than making assumptions about what these people would be like based on seeing loads and loads of other hit men films
Financing
Pre Production
Packaging
The Shoot
About
About casting: Reasonably unknown actor- low budget films need low cost actors.
About planning:
Filmed in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England:
Backing and funding from Screen Yorkshire
Cast:
Neil Maskell (Atonement)
MyAnna Buring (Twilight: Breaking Dawn)
Michael Smiley (Down Terrace, Luther)
Emma Fryer
Struan Rodger
Heads of Department:
Music- Jim Williams (Down Terrace)
Cinematography- Laurie Rose (Down Terrace)
Editing- Robin Hill (Down Terrace)
Casting- Ali Fearnley
Finance Plan:
Funded by Film4 Productions, UK Film Council, Screen Yorkshire
The Market: Classed as a Crime/Thriller/Horror film
Large market, but rated 18- small
audience?
About the production companies
Film 4 Productions- lots of experience with low budget films
UK Film Council- fairly large company that had a lot of experience working on low budget british films
Screen Yorkshire- not a lot of experience, set up by UK Film Council.
Camera:
Only a one camera used:
Laurie Rose with Nick Gillespie as the first assistant camera as well as the still photographer
Locations: Sheffield, England
Stunts were used to look more realistic
Reasons:
Such a low budget can only use small amounts of cameras and locations- all cost money
Sales
Marketing:
Exhibition:
Post Production
Promotion:
Film trailer before other films of that type in cinemas
Posters displayed outside cinemas
Not much money for advertising
Digital Effects?
Special effects including a flame supervisor and graphics
Editing shots
Premier:
The film's North American Premiere was 12 March 2011 at SXSW in Austin. Receiving much festival buzz, the film's North American Distribution rights were purchased by IFC Films.
Box Office:
Opening Weekend: $9,838 (USA) (5 February 2012) (2 Screens)
Gross: $26,297 (USA) (4 March 2012)
Distributors:
-Optimum Releasing (UK)
-IFC Midnight (US)
Screenings:
10 Screens USA
Release Date(s):
USA 12 March 2011
UK 2 September 2011
Other Windows
Kill List
DVD/Blu-Ray: August 14, 2012
No sequel
Reviews:
75% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes
57% of the audience liked it
"Kill List" begins with verbal violence at a dinner table, continues with actual violence in a hit-man scenario and concludes with metaphysical violence that threatens to decapitate the movie itself. It's baffling and goofy, blood-soaked and not boring. That it's well-made adds to the confusion; it feels like a better film than it turns out to be.
Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic