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Production & Sales Company Essential Film Group Launches With Team Including Rasmus Ramstad & James Norrie – Cannes Market

Andreas Wiseman
·2-min read

EXCLUSIVE: The Essential Film Group, under the chairmanship of former SF Studios exec Rasmus Ramstad, is launching in Cannes with a newly minted international sales division Essential Films International and the Essential Film Fund.

In addition, the group has unveiled the expansion of Sarke Studios, its Tbilisi-based production facility, which it hopes will make the group a one stop shop for finance, production, post and sales.

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Appointed to lead the newly formed sales agency, Essential Films International, are veteran sales executives James Norrie and Nina Kolokouri. Norrie has held leadership roles at Icon, Capitol Films and together with Kolokouri at Salt and most recently AMP. Kolokouri, in addition to her sales experience has spearheaded all business operations and financial closings for close to a decade.

Essential Film Group is also expanding its in-house production slate, together with plans for more co- production partnerships. Notable projects in development include an Ashley Miller (X-Men, Thor)-penned script as well as [In]Fusion, a sci-fi thriller about the future of AI; the self-funded production is currently out for casting and is due to shoot at the company’s Tbilisi studios.

Under the leadership of Irakli Chikvaidze, Head of Production at Sarke Studios, the company’s production wing has had significant upgrades to production facilities and its backlot space.

“It’s an exciting operation we’re building at Essential and a pleasure to have the experience of a sales team that includes James Norrie at the helm,” said Ramstad, Chairman at Essential Film Group. Norwegian vet Ramstad is the former SF Studios CEO.

“With our investment board, we’ve structured a 3-5 year plan that includes establishing the Essential Film Fund, and developing our sales strategy,” said Andy Thompson, Partner & Senior Executive at Essential Film Group. “I have been consistently impressed with James and Nina’s work since our collaboration during their tenure at Salt. This partnership, together with our established production business, enables us to create additional opportunities for collaborating with talented and experienced producers at all levels of production.”

“We are thrilled to be joining the Essential family,” said Norrie. “It’s extremely rare for a sales agency to have the weight of a robust film fund, an established production company and its own studio/production base. This, together with a team with so much ambition and experience under one roof makes it feel like the sky is the limit”.

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