Need to know: Actor Jude Law and his business partner Ben Jackson first met in a pub in Primrose Hill, London in 2000 and went on create Riff Raff Entertainment together in 2017. They built it into a small but serious production company, producing Harry Wootliff’s True Things in 2021 and securing investment from Calculus Capital in 2022. The revved-up Riff Raff squeezed in Justin Kurzel’s The Order before the US writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023, and shot TV series Black Rabbit for Netflix when the industry returned to work.
Further support comes from a first-look deal with Anton for film, and with Studio TF1 for TV. “It’s win-win for us,” says Jackson of the deal with the interconnected companies, as Studio TF1 also backs Anton. “We can take a project to them and they can put it with the team that likes the project.”
The company now has a diverse slate of writer-driven projects and aims to open an office in Los Angeles. “We’re hoping to expand through the involvement and the tastes of the people who are leading the development team,” says Law. “Nurturing other people’s ideas and passions is key to our long-term survival. There’s only so much I can do or get done.”
The Calculus investment does not have a time limit, but the ultimate aim is a third-party acquisition of Riff Raff.
Of the producers with whom Law has worked over the years, he cites Element Pictures’ Ed Guiney, and the late Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella as people whose producing style he admires. “There was such a familial, inclusive warmth to the way Sydney and Anthony operated,” says Law, who starred in Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain, both produced by Pollack and Minghella’s Mirage Enterprises. “It was the first time I recognised just what a team effort filmmaking was.”
Key personnel: Jude Law, Ben Jackson, founders and producers; Stephen Fuss, CEO; Katie Sinclair, head of film and TV; Lionelle Galloppa, development executive.
Incoming: Sharon Horgan’s first feature screenplay, a drama about a couple set in contemporary London in which Law will star. The project, which has the working title of 25 Scenes, is now out to a director and a female co-star to appear opposite Law, who has a window in summer 2026 to shoot the film.
The Whole World Is Watching is based on a script by Challengers and Queer writer Justin Kuritzkes. Set in the US in 1968, the drama takes place against the backdrop of the debates between writers Gore Vidal and William F Buckley Jr, but is not about the debate per se. Law will also star in this film, after acquiring the feature adaptation rights to Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville’s 2015 documentary Best Of Enemies about Vidal and Buckley Jr and asking Kuritzkes to write a script set in that socio-political milieu.
The company’s goal is to make projects that do not involve Law as an actor. “We always knew Jude would be leading us out of the gate, but now we feel we are out of the gate,” says Jackson. “We’re not just a vehicle for Jude. In fact, we’re not one at all. He doesn’t need one to work. He does it because he loves it.”
One of those projects will be Fireworks Every Night, set in 1990s Florida, which will be the next film from US director India Donaldson, whose debut feature Good One was at Sundance and Cannes in 2024.
Head of film and TV Sinclair’s relationship with writers has yielded projects from Joe Hampson (Feelgood) and Laura Carreira (On Falling), while Malcolm Campbell is writing a film called Volatiles based on a piece of real-life IP acquired by Riff Raff about the true story of a woman called Joy Milne who realised she could smell Parkinson’s when her husband was diagnosed with the disease and is now working on a test for it with Manchester University.
And Jackson has originated a feature idea he pitched to The Order and Black Rabbit co-creators Zach Baylin and Kate Susman, a “90-minute thrill ride” in the spirit of the tight, muscular films of the 1970s and 80s. “It’s about a retired getaway driver who thinks he’s done, but he has to do one more job, and get from A to B to C,” Jackson explains. “Obviously, it doesn’t go according to plan.”
TV projects for Riff Raff include a series about two female detectives, being developed with the BBC, and a series written by Ozark and Daredevil writer Whit Anderson called The Club for Hulu.
Jude Law says: “The most important element of the job I do at the company is to encourage and to enable other people. I don’t know how to line produce, I don’t know how to design a film, I don’t know how to write a film. But I know people who do. I like them and I believe in them, and I like to be able to put them in a situation where they can do their job. The next step is attaching actors and directors to these projects who are inspired and excited by the projects in the same way that I am and allowing them to lead the piece.”
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