UMG’s Globe Originals in Scripted Content Push With Multi-Hyphenates

Universal Music Group U.K.’s Globe sync and brand business has a long track record of placing music into films, TV shows, video games, advertising, and other content, plus making artists brand ambassadors. But it has also started pushing into original films via Globe Originals, a unit whose mission is to develop films with music as the creative engine, “opening opportunities for artists in new avenues.”

Globe Originals has collaborated on such film and TV productions Amy, Steven Knight’s This Town for the BBC, Mary McCartney’s If These Walls Could Sing for Disney+, the BAFTA-nominated and Irish Film & TV Awards (IFTA)-winning short film Nostalgie, and the Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-winning Hamnet. It has also worked with such directors and producers as Quentin Tarantino, Richard Curtis, Danny Boyle, and Faye Ward.  

Led by president Marc Robinson, the London-based Globe has recently been expanding into the U.S. and looking beyond its traditional business borders to open up new opportunities for multi-talented creatives ready to branch out, such as via a just-unveiled partnership with Hollywood producer and long-time Quentin Tarantino collaborator Shannon McIntosh (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Hateful Eight) focused on a slate of music-driven feature films. They are modern-day love story Falling, written and directed by Dominic Savage, which has Simone Ashley and  Sam Claflin attached, Dusty vs Dusty, a twist on the biopic focused on Dusty Springfield, and the music-driven Annie Oakley Hanging.

Globe Originals is also responsible for a Hamnet short film, Scientist of the Soul, about composer Max Richter’s journey on the film, which has been shown at Everyman cinemas in the U.K. before the feature presentation. And it is in the process of producing four documentaries about U.K. artists, for which details are expected to be revealed later this year.

Among the core reasons for the focus on Globe Originals are the increased demand for music-driven storytelling, the growing role of music as a driving force in audiovisual storytelling, and the interest of music creatives to move beyond traditional music releases and concert tours, according to Robinson.

Case in point for all these is one film in development under the partnership with McIntosh, Annie Oakley Hanging, described as a “fully music-driven feature ” and “a rebellious love story set in the wild American frontier.” It will be driven by an original soundtrack created by Dan Smith, songwriter and lead singer of Bastille, and  Ralph Pelleymounter, songwriter and lead singer of To Kill a King. 

“I loved the music Dan and Ralph wrote for Annie Oakley Hanging – its strong sense of narrative and ambition made it feel like a project we could have real fun and success with,” McIntosh tells THR.  “Reverse engineering the normal process of making a film by starting with the soundtrack is absolutely invigorating.  Globe Originals continues to seamlessly bridge music and screen, championing world-leading U.K. artists and bringing powerful, music-driven storytelling to audiences around the world.”

Multi-talented creatives who happily work as multi-hyphenates, just like Smith, are logical creators drawn to Globe Originals, Robinson and Smith say in discussing the new opportunities it is designed to open up.

“In our Globe work over the last 15 to 20 years, we’ve had a very close working relationship with the film and TV community through music for shows and film soundtracks,” Robinson tells THR. “As that world has evolved over the last decade, especially with streamers coming on board, and the soundtrack market has also evolved, we’ve wanted to keep our relationship with film and TV as solid as before. But we also have a whole new generation of artists now that come with such a broad skill set, and Dan Smith is one of those people. So we wanted to have a setup where we could really accommodate artist storytelling, catalog storytelling, work with filmmakers that we know get and love music, and push the boundaries of what we’re doing.” The result: Globe Originals, which brings film and music creatives together to jointly work on audiovisual projects.

So, how have collaborations changed? “In the old days, we were very much the receiver of the product that the film and TV industry made,” Robinson explains. “And now, we are trying to get in at the early stage and really bring a music conversation to film and TV in a way that we haven’t done before. Globe productions were initially focused very much on the documentary space, but we’ve started leaning into the scripted space more.”

Among his past musical work for film and TV, Smith wrote and produced the original song “Eurydice” for Netflix series Kaos and collaborated with Hans Zimmer, singer-songwriter Raye, and Bleeding Fingers Music to create the track “Mother Nature” for the BBC’s Planet Earth III documentary series.

More recently, thanks to Globe, the self-professed movie buff wrote songs and the score for the BAFTA-nominated short film Nostalgie, directed by Kathryn Ferguson (Sinéad O’Connor documentary Nothing Compares) and starring Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones, Peaky Blinders, Kin, Mayor of Kingstown, The Wire), which is set in the 1980s.

“Globe Originals is such a rare thing that bridges music and narrative storytelling and film, TV and short film. And Nostalgie is an amazing example of Mark bringing people together so fantastically,” Smith highlights. “I feel incredibly fortunate for the chance to expand beyond a traditional artist [career]. As a musician, as a songwriter, I have always been much more interested in not just writing an album about myself but diving into stories that fascinate me, trying to find out about different worlds or parts of history or things that I either know about or don’t.”

But how did he get involved in Nostalgie? “I was really excited when Mark told me all about it and introduced me to Kathryn, and the three of us chatted a few times about what would be required,” Smith tells THR with a smile that can’t hide his excitement.

Nostalgie needed songs “that were written in the ’80s, but have come to take on a meaning for a certain set of people that is wholly different from what the songwriter had intended,” Smith tells THR. “It’s about a topic so close to home, but often so untalked about, and using music as a way to explore that, almost as fable songs, is really central to the film. And Kathryn and everybody involved did such an amazing job. It’s really powerful, and we’re really proud of it.”

A synopsis for the 19-minute Nostalgie, which also features Jessica Reynolds (Kneecap) and Michael Smiley (Bad Sisters, Alien: Earth, The Lobster, Blue Lights), reads: “A 1980s popstar receives a surprising invitation to perform, pulling him out of musical retirement and into a moral dilemma.”

Asked about the challenge he faced as a songwriter to hit the right and necessary notes for Nostalgie, Smith summarizes things this way: “I had to write songs that were weird and goth and ’80s, but also immediate. You have to watch the film and believe that it would be an anthem for certain people in the film, and that as an audience member, you would maybe leave the film singing it.”

Smith ended up moving from writing key songs to handling the film score. “That was a whole other piece of work, trying to thread the music throughout, which is what I’ve been wanting to do for a long time,” he recalls. “Working across the whole project is, for a musician or a songwriter, the absolute dream.”

The music star also highlights that writing for film or TV is very different from writing a song or a whole music album. “It’s so different from an artist project, which I tend to write mainly by myself or with the guys in the band,” Smith notes. “When you’re starting an album, you can literally write about anything. It’s your own artistic endeavor. Whereas, obviously, when you’re writing for film, musicals or TV, you are in service of the director and their vision. And that’s a really different approach. I love it. I also do a lot of songwriting for other artists. It’s a really happy space for me, work-wise, to be in a room with someone else trying to help them tell the best version of what they’re trying to say.”

Robinson describes Smith as the blueprint for a talent tailor-made for Globe Originals. “Dan is a great example, probably the number one example, of an artist who thinks very narratively and is a huge cinephile,” he tells THR. “If you look at Dan’s work, also as a musician, it has always been cinematic, aesthetically. All his music videos are quite cinematic. And all his artist posters are like film posters. So, for artists like him, we wanted to have a set-up for music and film really coming together based on that collaboration ethos.”

Smith loved the Nostalgie experience. “It was just a really fun challenge and the dream project for me to be brought in for,” he tells THR. “And because the songs are central to the film, I got to work really closely with everyone to get the songs right, including with Aidan Gillen, who had to record studio versions of the songs and then learn to sing them live on set.”

And he adds: All the extras and actors had to learn them and scream along. It was this crazy, accelerated process of writing these songs while I was on tour, sitting in the back of a van, and then within a month seeing this raw footage come back from the set in Belfast with dozens of people screaming along every lyric of this song. It was the most surreal but gratifying experience.”

Smith is looking forward to more opportunities in film. And Globe Originals is already providing the next one, courtesy of its deal with McIntosh.

“I’m a big believer in knowing your skill sets and what you’re capable of,” Robinson tells THR. “We’re not a film production company in the scripted space. So for me, it was about partnering with people who can bring that expertise and who can also help celebrate and develop these ideas from artists. So with Shannon, we’re currently developing three projects. One is a musical, one is a twist on the biopic, and the third one is an idea that was the brainchild of Dan and Ralph.”

Indeed, Smith and his friend and collaborator Ralph Pelleymounter, lead vocalist of the band To Kill A King, came up with a story and a soundtrack. “Shannon was blown away by the quality of the music and the storytelling and will help us bring that to life,” explains the Globe executive. “We’ve started developing that. So, the evolution of Dan Smith is happening in real time right now. It’s all about that fusion of music and film in an organic way, and being there from the beginning and seeing how we can evolve this with the right people and the right team.”

Could we see Smith directing a movie one day? He sounds very much open to the idea. “I really enjoyed directing music videos in the past,” she tells THR. “I was co-director on one of my videos for a song called ‘No Bad Days,’ which was trying to make a time-lapse sci-fi about the reanimation of an android in the future. That was my first experience of directing. And then I also did a self-directed music video in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle at sea when I was on a Greenpeace ship.”

Smith also shares: “When I was growing up, the rock star that I looked up to more than anyone else was David Lynch. He was kind of my Bowie when I was a kid. He made films, he scored his own films, he painted, he made albums. So the idea of getting to do what he has done would be amazing.”