Richard Johns (producer)

Richard Johns is a UK film and television producer. As well as producing many commercially successful and critically acclaimed films, he has helped discover and foster the next generation of directors and writers across the UK, Europe and the US.

After five years learning the producing trade from the ground up making corporate films and commercials, Richard’s TV work started in 1992 with regional ITV productions for Tyne Tees, Yorkshire, Granada and Border Television, working with partner Bharat Nalluri. The pair co-founded regional indie Pilgrim Films. Richard's feature film work started in 1995 with no-budget comic thriller Killing Time, directed by Nalluri and taken up by Columbia Tristar in a battle with Miramax Films and in which the pair discovered then student writer Neil Marshall. Johns went on to produce dramatic thriller Downtime in 1996 with director Nalluri and new writer Caspar Berry, in partnership with Stephen Woolley and Nik Powell’s Scala Films, and Channel Four Films. Hollywood called Richard next in the form of Nicolas Cage’s production shingle Saturn Films with the project Shadow of the Vampire. Richard was then asked to run a series of feature productions including Orlando Bloom vehicle The Calcium Kid for Working Title Films, Jennifer Love Hewitt-Dougray Scott romance The Truth About Love, and UK-Australian co-production Like Minds with Toni Collette, in which he spotted and cast the talent of then up-and-coming young British actors Eddie Redmayne and Tom Sturridge. In 2007 Johns developed and produced the powerful drama Dangerous Parking.