The story
Founded by Brian Eastman in 1978.1
Carnival Films was founded in 1978 by feature film producer Brian Eastman.
As of 2014, Carnival has produced over 500 hours of drama and comedy for television, cinema and stage. This included 70 episodes of Agatha Christie's Poirot starring David Suchet and 22 episodes of Rosemary & Thyme, starring Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris. In the action/adventure genre it produced BUGS, Oktober and The Grid, in comedy drama it produced Jeeves and Wooster starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, teenage drama-comedy As If, as well as the adaptations of Tom Sharpe's novels Blott on the Landscape and Porterhouse Blue.
In 2004, the BBC's former Head of Drama Commissioning Gareth Neame joined Carnival as managing director. In 2007, former Creative Director of BBC Drama Sally Woodward Gentle joined the company as Creative Director. The two had previously worked together on Spooks (MI:5), Tipping the Velvet and Cambridge Spies.
In 2007 Australian production company Southern Star acquired 75% percent of Carnival Films but by 2008 the company was acquired by American-based NBCUniversal as part of its plan to increase its presence in content creation outside the United States. Following several more acquisitions Carnival is now part of NBCUniversal International Television Production alongside newer additions Monkey Kingdom, Working Title Television, Chocolate Media and Lucky Giant in the UK, Lark in Canada and Matchbox Pictures in Australia.
Under the direction of Gareth Neame, Carnival has produced series such as The Philanthropist for NBC; hit BBC series Hotel Babylon; the television films Enid starring Helena Bonham Carter and Matthew Macfadyen; Page Eight starring Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz, Michael Gambon and Ralph Fiennes; four-part drama Any Human Heart starring Jim Broadbent, Matthew MacFadyen, Hayley Atwell and Kim Cattrall; The Hollow Crownfor BBC; Whitechapel for ITV; Jamestown and Stan Lee's Lucky Man for Sky One; The Last Kingdom for BBC One and Netflix; Belgravia for ITV1 and Epix; Belgravia: The Next Chapter for MGM+; and The Day Of The Jackal and Lockerbie: A Search for Truth for Sky and Peacock. Psychological thriller All Her Fault starring Sarah Snook will also launch on Peacock in late 2025.
Carnival's biggest hit, both critically and commercially, is Downton Abbey, written and co-produced by Julian Fellowes. The final episode of the TV series aired on 25 December 2015. In 2016, Neame and Fellowes started planning a feature adaptation; it was officially confirmed in July 2018 and filming began later that month. Downton Abbey was released in the United Kingdom on 13 September 2019 by Universal Pictures, and in the United States on 20 September 2019 by Focus Features. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $194 million worldwide. The sequel, Downton Abbey: A New Era, was released in 2022, and a third and final film, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, was released in September 2025.
From Wikipedia’s article on Carnival Films, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4