Magna Studios Signs Filmmaking Duo Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard
London-based production house Magna Studios has signed BAFTA-nominated filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, taking on their commercial and brand representation and partnering on longer-form projects, according to an exclusive report by Deadline.
Forsyth and Pollard are the duo behind 20,000 Days on Earth, the 2014 music documentary featuring Nick Cave, and Broken English, a feature documentary about Marianne Faithfull that premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in January. Their television work includes the BBC series Murder and the Sky Arts anthology shows Likely Stories and The Dali & The Cooper. They work across film, installation, performance, sound, documentary, and TV drama.
Magna will handle brand deals and commercial work for the pair while also developing longer-form projects together — a dual arrangement that mirrors the studio's own structure, which spans scripted, non-fiction, branded, and music video divisions.
Launched the previous year by co-CEO Davud Karbassioun and Marissa Clifford — formerly the head of Pulse Studios — Magna has moved quickly to assemble a director roster that already includes Mona Fastvold, Chiwetel Ejiofor, James Marsh, Asif Kapadia, Brady Corbet, and Sebastian Strasser, among others. Thomas Benski invested in the studio through his Lumina label.
The studio's early output gives a sense of its range. Its Oasis documentary Don't Look Back in Anger premiered at the Venice Film Festival, played in select IMAX and cinemas worldwide, and now streams on Disney+ internationally and on Hulu and Disney+ in the U.S. Other projects on Magna's slate include a Lily Allen feature documentary confirmed by Prime Video, an Aron Ralston feature documentary directed by James Marsh with National Geographic, and a Chobani-backed docuseries on the US Men's National Soccer Team directed by Hector Dockrill. A Steven Knight Oasis documentary has also been confirmed by Disney.
For Forsyth and Pollard, the deal places them inside a studio built around the idea that filmmakers should be free to move between disciplines — from a music video to a branded campaign to a feature documentary — without the traditional walls between those worlds.
For Magna, it adds two filmmakers with a Sundance premiere and a Nick Cave documentary on their credits to a roster already deep in music and non-fiction talent. The question now is what those longer-form projects turn out to be.
