‘Sisu’ Producer Good Chaos Signs First-Look Deal With Searchlight

Good Chaos, the U.K. production banner founded by industry veteran Mike Goodridge, has signed a first look deal with Searchlight Pictures.

The arrangement — which will see Searchlight develop and produce films alongside Good Chaos — comes during a period of success and growth for the London-based company, which last year saw two of its films shortlisted for the international feature Oscar in Baltasar Kormakur’s Icelandic romance drama “Touch” and Sandhya Suri’s India-set crime thriller “Santosh,” representing the U.K.

Coming up, the company heads to Cannes with Shih-Ching Tsou’s “Left Handed Girl” (co-written by recently crowned Oscar monopolizer and Tsou’s frequent collaborator Sean Baker) in the Critics’ Week sidebar. Beyond the festival, it’s adding another Oscar winner to its ranks with “Orphan,” the next film from “Son of Saul” director Laszlo Nemes and now in post.

In an entirely different direction genre-wise, Sony has just announced the sequel to Good Chaos’ biggest box office hit to date, 2022’s gory WWII actioner “Sisu” from writer/director Jalmari Helander and starring Jorma Tommila as a legendary Finnish commando who takes on an entire SS platoon. Stephen Lang — playing an evil Russian — joins Tommila in “Sisu 2,” releasing wide in late November (and, in a bit of amusing counter-programming, on the same day as “Wicked: For Good”).

“The sequel is bigger and better — it’s a real knockout,” says Goodridge, who says it features “just tons of blood.” The budget has been upped accordingly on the first “Sisu,” which was estimated at around $6.5 million (and would go on to earn more than $14 million).

But Netflix’s upcoming feature “The Ballad of a Small Player” elevates Good Chaos into a whole new movie-making space, marking its largest and most ambitious feature to date. Starring Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton, the psychological thriller is based on the book by Lawrence Osborne about a gambler and was set and shot last year amid the towering casinos of Macau (where Goodridge served as artistic director of its film festival from 2016-2021).

In the director’s seat is Edward Berger, on major hot streak since landing back-to-back hits with “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Conclave,” and his first feature since his Oscar-winning Papal thriller.

“It was actually the first book I ever optioned,” says Goodridge, who notes he bought the rights after he stepped down as CEO of Protagonist Pictures in 2017. Berger was attached early on, having been spotted for his directing work on “Patrick Melrose” and before 2022’s BAFTA-conquering “All Quiet.”

However, Goodridge wasn’t the only one chasing the director. “He was coming on board a lot of things at that time,” says Goodridge. The awards campaign for “Conclave” actually “got in the way of post” on “Ballad of a Small Player,” he notes, but he says that, despite everyone wanting a piece of Berger as his star rose, “he stuck with it and stuck with us, which is fantastic.”

With “The Ballad of a Small Player” now in the final stretch, Goodridge now says the plan is for Good Chaos to be producing more films of this size and scope, alongside its work with first-time directors and new talent.

“Having got ‘Ballad,’ which is a much bigger film than the films we were doing earlier on, across the line, the focus now is to move into a bigger space,” he explains. “We’ll always be scouting and helping smaller films, but we’re also stepping up into a more ambitious type of movie, budget-wise and scale-wise.”

Another new focus is a shift into TV, with several projects in development. “But the hardest thing for a new TV company to do is get a commission,” Goodridge claims. Thankfully, on the scripted series front, Good Chaos is working with a team of writers including Rebecca Lenkiewicz (“She Said,” “Hot Milk”), Ava Wong Davies (one of Variety’s “10 Brits to Watch” earlier this year), Tony Marchant (a BAFTA TV award winner whose work includes hit 1990s drama “Holding On”) and Oliver Lansley (the actor and writer best known for creating recent Apple TV+ comedy series “Where’s Wanda?”)

Alongside Goodridge, spearheading the company’s new drive into bigger features and scripted TV is a team including producer James Bowsher (a BIFA winner and BAFTA nominee for “Santosh”), general manager Yoav Rosenberg, head of development Catriona Renton (who moved from TV banner Two Brothers and, says Goodridge, “brings a lot of TV experience”) and two coordinators in Sydney Oberfeld and Ella Ritchie.

For Goodridge, while Good Chaos may be entering a new phase, the international focus of the company — which is a proud and active member of the pan-European indie production collective The Creatives — remains exactly the same.

“Rather than a lot of British companies, which look West to the U.S., we look East to Europe and beyond,” he says, pointing to its growing roster of global filmmakers and shooting destinations including Japan, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Scandinavia, Hungary and India. “I want to be able to be a U.K.-based company that’s completely internationalized.”