U.K. Producer Mike Goodridge: “It’s a Blessing and a Curse We Share the Same Language as the U.S.”

British producer Mike Goodridge spoke to the advantages of going global on Tuesday at a San Sebastian Film Festival event.

The Good Chaos founder appeared during a fireside event for the fest’s Creative Investors’ Conference, now in its second year, where across a two-day event, a myriad of the world’s top producers come to talk funding, failures and fears as execs try to keep up with a rapidly-changing industry.

The ex-Protagonist CEO, the focus of a recent The Hollywood Reporter profile ahead of Venice, has had a wild festival run this summer with Laszlo Nemes’ historical drama Orphan, Imran Perretta’s coming-of-age debut Ish, and Helen Walsh’s erotic sophomore feature On the Sea. He comes to the fest on Spain’s northern coast to talk business, but another of his heavyweights is set to screen: Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player with Colin Farrell.

Speaking with Wendy Mitchell, San Sebastian’s U.K. and Nordic delegate and Investor’s Conference organizer, Goodridge took attendees through his hotly anticipated projects, including Finnish action thriller Sisu: Road to Revenge, and pondered over the support for the British film industry.

“I think it’s a blessing and a curse we share the same language as the U.S.,” he said about balancing Britain’s undeniable talent and IP with Hollywood money, adding: “Most of the film technicians in the U.K. are employed by American companies. Harry Potter is a British thing, but it’s not, it’s American. Same with James Bond. So our independent films have to advocate this path through the clutter of Americanism.”

“The U.K. has a great cinema legacy,” he continued. “It’s a great cinema country. And every year, there are some fantastic new films. I’d love to make some great, big British films. I’m planning to,” he said, adding that there is “good support” for indie films from the likes of the British Film Institute (BFI) and BBC Film.

When pressed to answer whether he agrees that the U.K. is not “traditionally a great co-producer” and that Goodridge is one of two or three producers in Britain working globally, he responded: “That’s my case really, is to look internationally. It’s almost been my interest to look at the world and the new voices and styles — of Hollywood, too, but I don’t think I would make films in the U.S. particularly well… I much prefer exploring the world, and I’m very comfortable doing that, and I plug in the U.K. financing whenever I can.”

Though the travel brings perks, the exec also admitted to facing an enormous amount of difficulty while trying to make Ballad in Macau, China, where the film is set. “Shanghai Surprise (1986), remember that? With Madonna. Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom (1984), Now You See Me 2 (2016),” Goodridge listed as films that have all been shot in Macau. “[But] it was one of the most challenging things I ever had to do, get that film made.”

He said: “It’s a very small city. It’s a city state, really. It’s a population of 600,000, so it’s very hard to kind of build up an indigenous industry. You go through Hong Kong, which is often not the easiest, because they don’t know much about Macau either… Edward would point at a piece of land that he wanted to shoot on, we couldn’t find out who owned the land. Nobody in government, nobody knew. [Laughs.] So we couldn’t get permission to shoot that.” Ballad is backdropped by the city’s infamous casinos, which also proved tasking. “Shooting the casinos was incredibly challenging,” Goodridge said, “because at any moment you’re shooting, there’s a loss of revenue to them.”

Goodridge went into more detail across the session about working with Sean Baker and why attracting a good cast will always start with the film’s director. He touched on his extensive ambitions to get into television producing and teased a little about an upcoming rom-com he’s working on called Paris-Hollywood, adapted from the novel by French film critic Cécile Mury. Paris-based Haut et Court and Good Chaos, two of the founding members of the Fremantle-backed indie production collective The Creatives, secured the film rights to Mury’s work in February.

The San Sebastian International Film Festival 2025 runs Sept. 19-27.