James Flynn, an Irish film producer who helped start Metropolitan Film Productions and was a co-producer on The Banshees of Inisherin, has died. He was 57.
His production company told The Irish Times in a statement that Flynn died on Saturday of an unknown illness. Alex and Anna Wilson, his wife Juanita, and Alex and Anna Wilson, his children, were all around him.
The Banshees of Inisherin, starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, is up for nine awards, including best picture, and is having a successful awards season and Oscar run when he dies. The movie was directed by Martin McDonagh and starred Farrell and Gleeson.
During his decades-long career, Flynn worked as a producer on a number of well-known movies and TV shows in different ways. The Last Duel, which was directed by Ridley Scott and starred Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, and Disenchanted, the sequel to Disney+’s Enchanted, both starred Isabelle Huppert.
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Greta, which was directed by Neil Jordan and starred Isabelle Huppert, was a mystery-thriller. On TV, he was the executive producer of Vikings and its spinoff Valhalla, as well as the Irish crime drama Kin, which starred Charlie Cox, Aiden Gillen, and Ciarán Hinds, and was shown on RTE and AMC+.
Throughout his career, Flynn’s work helped Irish filmmakers and actors get more attention through domestic and international co-productions. Several members of The Banshees of Inisherin team were among those who got more attention because of Flynn’s work.
That includes Jordan’s 2009 romantic drama Odine with Farrell and McDonagh’s 2014 Catholic church abuse drama Calvary with Gleeson and Kin’s Gillen.
He also produced the romantic comedies Leap Year, Love, Rosie, and Ella Enchanted. He was the executive producer of Irish directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn’s Cherrybomb, which starred Rupert Grint and Robert Sheehan.
He co-produced the period romances Tristan + Isolde and Becoming Jane. He also co-produced The Count of Monte Cristo in 2002 and King Arthur in 2004. As a producer and executive producer (EP), he helped make genre and historical TV shows like “Into the Badlands,” “Penny Dreadful,” “Reign,” “The Borgias,” “Camelot,” and “The Tudors.”
Flynn would get a job as the head of development at John Boorman’s Merlin Films International, which would put him in the Irish film business.
Between 1993 and 1997, he was the business manager and then the deputy CEO of the Irish Film Board, which is now called Screen Ireland. In these jobs, he looked at movies and TV shows to see if they could get loans for development or production.
During this time, he made the movies Angela’s Ashes and Sweety Barrett, which both starred Brendan Gleeson. He also made TV movies like Her Own Rules and A Secret Affair, as well as the TV show Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog.
He and his wife started Metropolitan Film Productions Limited in 1997. In 2002, he started Octagon Films, where he would make movies for the international market. One of these was the Irish comedy Rory O’Shea Was Here, which came out in 2004 and starred James McAvoy and Steven Robertson.
Flynn is a member of the Irish Film and TV Academy and has made a number of IFTA-winning shows, such as Vikings, Penny Dreadful, Kin, and Love/Hate.
He also made the movie Tomato Red: Blood Money, which was nominated for an IFTA. He was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the short film “The Door” in 2008 and the animated movie “The Secret of Kells” in 2009.