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Niall’s most recent work to be released is as a Writer on the award-winning, innovative, visually-striking and critically-hailed animated drama-documentary hybrid ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE, based on the memoir by Ryszard Kapuscinski set in the Angolan civil war of the mid-1970s. Winner of the Best Animated Film at both the 2018 European Film Awards and the 2019 Goya Awards, it received its World Premiere at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival as Official Selection Out of Competition, and has been winning Audience Award at a wide range of festivals including San Sebastian. “A visually striking piece of rare immediacy and power…fast-moving and urgent…visually spectacular”(Hollywood Reporter).   “One of Europe’s most awaited animation films” (Variety). “Exhilarating…breath-taking” (Cineuropa). “You will not be the same person after watching this film” (Thierry Fremaux, Cannes Film Festival director). “Matches documentary authenticity with dramatic intensity…commands your attention” (Screen Daily). Produced by Kanaki Films, Spain,     and Platige Films, Poland, it began its worldwide release in October 2018.

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Niall’s two most recent films as Writer-Director were released within a year of each other. 

 

First, in November 2016: MUM’S LIST, a true story weepie romance based on St John Greene’s best-selling memoir, starring Rafe Spall and Emilia Fox. After a theatrical run in the UK its release on DVD/VOD in March 2017 saw    it reach #1 on the Amazon DVD/Blu-Ray bestsellers chart within a single day. “Heartfelt and utterly committed performances” (The Guardian), “Powerful and beautifully acted” (Mail on Sunday) “A huge emotional rollercoaster, carefully and painstakingly handled” (Vue Magazine), “A triumph” (HeyUGuys), “Heart-breaking and ultimately uplifting”(Mark Kermode, BBC Radio 5 Live), “A wonderful film” (TalkSport Radio) “Probably the most touching thing I have seen in a while” (BBC Radio 3), “Beautifully well-crafted, staggeringly moving, a truly great thing.” (Flickreel) “Deeply moving

and altogether outstanding. One of the most memorable of 2016.”  (The Hollywood News). It has screened as Official Selection at the Dinard Festival of British Film, at Shanghai, at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis, USA (where it won the Audience Award), and at the Festival of British Film at D’Ajaccio in Corsica (where it  won the main festival prize, the Prize Coup de Couer: the ‘Love At First Sight’ prize).  In the UK it has found its Network TV home with the BBC. In the US, it released in April 2019, re-titled as ACRES & ACRES.

    

A year later, November 2017, saw the UK release of Niall’s Western-styled adventure story THE STOLEN: set in New Zealand’s 1860s Gold Rush, starring Alice Eve, Jack Davenport, Graham McTavish and Richard O’Brien. It was released in the US by Universal, and has just finished a successful 16-week theatrical run in New Zealand. “A heart-wrenching and thrilling adventure. Johnson has brought the characters to the screen with style” (Blazing Minds), “A hard-hitting frontier Western, engaging and refreshing (Time Out London), “A visual and audial treat” (The Upcoming), “Johnson

has a strong grasp on the visuals and the characters” (Vulture Hound). “Thrilling adventure, utterly heart-rending.

Pick of the week” (Hello Magazine). 

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Niall came to Hollywood’s notice in 2003 with his spec supernatural script WHITE NOISE, produced by Gold Circle

Films, and starring Michael Keaton and Debra Kara Unger. It opened in January 2005 at #1 in the UK and #2 in the US, where it broke the record at the time for the biggest January opening for a non-sequel. It reached the $100m mark

on worldwide theatrical, and has enjoyed  an equally ripe career on DVD and TV.

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In 2005 Niall wrote and directed black comedy KEEPING MUM, starring Rowan Atkinson, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Patrick Swayze. He adapted the script from an original by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo (Nobody’s Fool, Empire Falls). The film’s 2006 worldwide release was commercially and critically successful: “a sophisticated gem” (Hollywood Reporter), “British comedy at its very best” (Daily Mirror), “exceedingly well-played

and neatly crafted” (Variety), “simply delightful” (New York Post), “I adored it” (Rex Reed, New York Observer), “wickedly wonderful entertainment” (The Sun), “one of the best British film comedies in recent years” (The Times, UK).

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Niall has written for an array of producers in the UK and US: projects ranging from a bio-pic about Maria Callas, an adaptation of Stuart O’Nan’s supernatural novel THE NIGHT COUNTRY, a true-story drama about an American codebreaker in WW2 China, and yet another adaptation of TREASURE ISLAND. He’s attached to a diverse range of movies currently in development: Rom-Com KEEP ME POSTED for Disney+ (starring Dove Cameron and Ross Butler), sci-fi thriller HUMANOID for the Cambridge Picture Company, Brit-Com SONS OF NEPTUNE for Eclipse Films, Norwegian WW2 true story THE BORDER GUIDE for Film Ink, and horror thriller THE BOGGART for BoxFly Films

 

Born and raised in Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, England, Niall’s passion for movies is a result of a childhood spent producing epic remakes of the likes of PLANET OF THE APES, STAR TREK, DOCTOR WHO and BATMAN with his older brother, a friend, and a silent Kodak 8mm film camera—the most notable recurring feature of these being his mother’s laundry hanging on the washing line in the back-yard! 

 

He began writing and directing movies in the UK at the end of the 1980s, after graduating with First Degree Honours in Drama from Bristol University. He started with a run of low budget features, including vampire romance DAWN (1991), and wife-swapping comedy drama THE BIG SWAP (theatrically released in Europe, 1998). Telling the tale of five couples who partner-swap and then pay the price, THE BIG SWAP won the Gold Award at the 1998 Flagstaff Film Festival in Arizona, and was selected as Critic’s Choice at the 1999 Rotterdam Film Festival. It was called “unmissable” (Daily Star), “one of the year’s gems” (Cosmopolitan), and “a tour de force” (Seattle Weekly). In the UK, 1999 it secured a place in the year’s top 30 Video Rental releases. Niall followed that with traditional haunted house tale THE GHOST OF GREVILLE LODGE (1999, starring Prunella Scales and George Cole), which has become a Halloween/Christmas season favorite on TV channels around the world, and was called “a real golden film in an era that has lost its shine” (IMDB).

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