Screen Forever 2024: Lantern Pictures to champion female voices

A new production company, Lantern Pictures, has been announced at Screen Forever on the Gold Coast.

Writer, producer and showrunner, Sarah Lambert has partnered with director Jane Manning and TV executive Andrew Lambert.

Headquartered in Sydney, Lantern Pictures is a new collaborative screen venture that champions female voices and narrative perspectives with a vision to develop and sustain a true creative driven showrunner model for the Australian TV industry.

Sarah Lambert said: “No matter what’s going on in international markets, the one thing that cuts through is bold, visionary storytelling. Lantern Pictures is unashamedly writer / creator centric, creating television with a strong authorial voice that will resonate with audiences around the world. We’re driven by a passion for exploring characters and worlds we haven’t seen before and making shows with heart that get under your skin.”

Sarah Lambert had been talking for some years about creating a company together with her long-term friend and collaborator, director / writer Jane Manning and with her brother, TV executive and lawyer Andrew Lambert.

“It’s always been our goal to create a female-led company that places writers and creators at the heart of their productions, empowering and supporting them,” Sarah Lambert said.

“Despite the rise of premium female-driven storytelling, there is still huge scope to empower female and diverse creators in Australia. Through embracing the showrunner model we hope to nurture the groundswell of female-led and diverse talent that Australia has, to create inventive and ground-breaking premium drama,” Manning added.

Sarah Lambert is one of the most prolific Australian screenwriters and has created, written and produced some of the most iconic dramas of the last ten years. Stories about women have been at the heart of her success. Most recently she was creator and showrunner of the award-winning The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (Made Up Stories/ Amazon) which won multiple awards and broke records as the most successful ever Australian Amazon Original launch globally. She was also writer and showrunner on the critically acclaimed and multi-award winning series, Lambs of God (Lingo/Foxtel), following up with another Lingo collaboration on the adaptation of Markus Zusak’s The Messenger (ABC). She also the creator of the hit series Love Child (Nine Network) which ran for four seasons.

Jane Manning is an award-winning director and writer whose recent work includes the documentary series Back to Nature (as creator, series producer and writer-director), and Deep Rising, narrated by Jason Momoa. She was director-writer of Ka-Ching! Pokie Nation, earning a Special Mention at the Australian Directors’ Guild awards, and wrote and directed multiple episodes of many acclaimed series, such as Who Do You Think You Are? After many years directing and writing documentaries, Jane will return to her drama roots with Lantern by adapting extraordinary true stories.

Andrew Lambert is an experienced television executive and lawyer who worked in Sydney and New York. Most recently he was Director of Business Affairs at Foxtel where his job included running their larger TV and film licensing deals and managing the commercial side of their original productions. Prior roles include running the commercial division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Director of Content and Commercial with Lightbox (now Neon, Sky New Zealand’s streaming service).