Concept Development Services

Here is how this works in practice. Irish concept development sits inside a creative ecosystem that has produced seven Best Picture Oscar nominations in the past decade and built indie 2D animation's most decorated studio at Cartoon Saloon Kilkenny. The Secret of Kells. Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner, and Wolfwalkers all earned Best Animated Feature Oscar nominations. Our concept team draws on that lineage and the broader today's canon.

Here is the short of it. Lenny Abrahamson's Room (Best Director nom, Brie Larson Best Actress 2016) and Normal People for HBO, Martin McDonagh's Banshees of Inisherin (multiple Oscar noms 2023) and In Bruges, John Carney's Once (Best First Song Oscar 2007 for Falling Slowly) and Sing Street. Kenneth Branagh's Belfast (Best First Screenplay Oscar 2022). Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, Neil Jordan's The Crying Game (Best First Screenplay 1992) and Michael Collins (Venice Golden Lion 1996), John Crowley's Brooklyn, and Colm Bairéad's The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin), the first Irish-language Best International Feature Oscar nominee.

We brainstorm against Section 481 eligibility from day one, map cultural-test points, and pressure-test premises with Screen Ireland (Bord Scannán na hÉireann) development executives before scripts go to commissioners.

Here is the breakdown. Our process treats Ireland's literary heritage as raw material. We anchor concepts in W.B. Yeats (Nobel Literature 1923), Samuel Beckett (Nobel 1969), Seamus Heaney (Nobel 1995), James Joyce's Dublin (Ulysses, Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist), Oscar Wilde's wit, Bram Stoker's Dracula gothic. Edna O'Brien's transgressive intimacy. Anne Enright's Man Booker-winning interiority, and Sally Rooney's Normal People and Conversations with Friends. This includes adapted respectively at Element Pictures with Lenny Abrahamson directing.

Here is what that looks like on the ground. We set up workshops with Screen Ireland's development team in Dublin, the Galway Film Centre, the Cork Film Office, and Northern Ireland Screen in Belfast. Plus residencies at IFI Irish Film Institute. The Dublin International Film Festival. The Galway Film Fleadh, and the Cork International Film Festival (the oldest in Ireland, since 1956). Our concept packages include treatments and look-books designed to satisfy Section 481's cultural-test framework. Irish or EEA writers, directors, key cast. Post-prod, or major Irish cultural content.

Here is how the picture comes together. This includes while testing whether the project fits the 40% regional uplift outside Dublin and Cork. For Northern Ireland-anchored stories, we route concept development through Northern Ireland Screen's slate funding and the DfC. Opening doors to Belfast's Titanic Quarter. The Antrim Coast. Tollymore Forest, and the Derry/Londonderry storytelling custom that gave Derry Girls its voice.