Producer Richard Johns tells Steve Pratt about his latest movie, Liability, which was shot over just four weeks in locations around the region

IT all began with two fathers taking their three-year-olds to nursery school in Suffolk.

“That’s when he pitched me the story,” recalls producer Richard Johns.

The other man was writer John Wrathall. “We heard about him because my wife is a primary school teacher and he teaches writing and storytelling classes with young children at local schools,” explains Johns.

“He had this script which he’d written some years before and then put in a drawer. It was a road trip story starting in the East of England, but spending most of the time in the North-East.

Particularly in John’s case, the setting resonated because he loves Get Carter.”

Although he now lives in Suffolk, Johns is familiar with the North-East. He first came to Newcastle to work as a marketing brand assistant with Procter and Gamble on products such as Fairy and Ariel.

“That gave me an idea about running a business, and a lot of knowledge about advertising and the market. About how you reach out to customers and understand what they want. These are quite deep instincts and influence how I form the choice of films I make and how I make them,” he says.

Then he ran Pilgrim Films with film-maker Bharat Nalluri from “a cupboard” at the Tyneside cinema in Newcastle. They made the films Killing Time and Downtime in the region.

The Liability – Wrathall’s script about a hit man (Tim Roth) and the young guy (Jack O’Connell) who wants to be like him – was made through Corona Pictures, the production company Johns now runs with Rupert Jermyn.

The Liability has links with his marketing past as one of the investors was Newcastle-based Middleton Enterprises, whose CEO is Jeremy Middleton, with whom he worked at Procter and Gamble. Investment fund Northstar Ventures was another backer of the film.

“The key point was when Tim Roth came on board and committed to do the film. That was really the turning point in getting the film made,” says Johns.

“To have a star like Tim brought all the other actors into place because he’s an actor every other actor wants to work with. From our sales agent’s point of view, we had a strong commercial story to deliver in the film market.”

The movie was shot in four weeks in the winter of 2011 on a range of locations throughout the North-East including Hartlepool, Darlington, Dunstanburgh Castle, the port of Blythe and Ryhope Pumping Station. But there are no “touristy” shots of familiar Newcastle landmarks.

“For the purposes of the story the characters need to be out of the eye of the public and police most of the time. So naturally they had to be outside major cities. Our story doesn’t take us through Newcastle. We had the opportunity to show another side of the region and less famous landmarks,” says Johns.

“Dunstanburgh Castle was a place I knew and has incredible mystery, a sense of this imposing presence. The location is completely astonishing.

And the pumping station was a gem of a discovery which we found with the help of Northern Film and Media.”

Corona Pictures is based in London but, says Johns, they consider themselves international film-makers. He could well make more movies in the region. “We’re looking at projects with partners in the North-East,” he says.

  • Following selected cinema screenings The Liability (15) will be released on Metrodome video on Monday and is also available on Sky On Demand.