OUR COMPANY
Prodigy Movies believes “Aussie genre films” are well suited to the Australian film industry as they are a growth strategy for producers, a training ground for’emerging’ directors and most importantly ‘know their audience’.
We call them Ozploitation(*) movie
(*) Quentin Tarantino coined “Aussieploitation” which we have shortened to “Ozploitation”.
They include low-budget Australian projects to large scale international productions.
OUR TEAM
Michael Robertson
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Prodigy Movies is headed by Michael Robertson – a leading figure in the Australian film industry.
Prodigy Movies’ first production Black Water” was the Aussie hit film of 2007 and the survival/thriller The Reef received accolades as “the scariest shark film since Jaws” placing the company at the centre of genre-filmmaking in Australia.
Michael is currently developing a slate of both high and low budget genre movies and is a founding partner in Thrills & Spills with Neal Kingston of Cornerstone Pictures.
Michael directed the feature films – The Best of Friends, Going Sane and Back of Beyond. He established the TVC production company, Prodigy winning Cannes Lion,Mobius, One Show New York, CLIO, AWARD, MADC and ATV awards and has featured as one of the leading ad makers in Kodak USA’s ‘Commercial Makers”.
He is a graduate of the University of New South Wales, with postgraduate cinema studies at the University of Southern California. He is a member of ACE Producers, an international association of film producers based in Amsterdam.
Michael Baskin
A qualified Chartered Accountant in South Africa in 1978. He heads Baskin Clarke Priest a Sydney-based chartered accountancy practice.
He has achieved an enviable reputation for providing a range of business advisor services to select corporate clients and individuals. He has been involved with clients in the advertising, television commercial industry as well as film production for the past 15 tears.
He acts as financial adviser to Prodigy Movies in both fund raising and tax mitigation and is an expert in international financing.
He is credited as an executive producer on Road Train, The Reef and Black Water: Abyss.
OUR PARTNERS
Cornerstone Pictures is a Sydney-based production company headed by Neal Kingston. In 2018 Prodigy Movies and Cornerstone teamed up to create Thrills & Spills specialising in the development and production of Aussie genre films.
One year into the journey the pair have completed the “Black Water” followup Black Water: Abyss – due for release in 2020 and the shark lhriller Great White- due forf completion in midyear
Thrills & Spills Pty Ltd was established in 2018 by Michael Robertson and Neal Kingston as a development and production company specialising in Australian genre films. They have delivered the Black Water follow-up Black Water:Abyss and have completed the shark thriller Great White.
Production plans are well advanced for a series of dark edgy ‘genre-type’ projects from Australia’s most innovative producing team.
Neal Kingston
Neal has extensive international experience as a Producer of television and film and worked in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and the US, developing film and TV drama and comedy projects.
Neal helped develop and produce the interstitial program slate, In Bed with Desire, an anthology of 20 short films, screening on Arena channel through the Foxtel Network.
He was Post Production Producer of three series of the internationally successful television series, McLeod’s Daughters.
Neal produced the popular long running daily half-hour TV series Neighbours for Fremantle Media. Neal produced a series of the childrens’ television brand Hi-5 in Singapore. This followed producing the independent feature film Nerve which premiered at the Sydney International Film Festival. In 2017 he again joined Hi-5 at Pinewood Iskandar Malaysia Studios.
Neal is currently developing a range of original TV series and feature film projects through his company Cornerstone Pictures.
He has setup the Thrills & Spills label with Michael Robertson to produce genre-films Black Water: Abyss and Great White are their first projects.