This just in! Damian’s new film Fackham Hall, a period romance parody and murder mystery, will hit Canadian and US theaters Friday, December 5, 2025. Fan-owned entertainment company Legion M entered into a financing and distribution partnership with Bleecker Street to co-finance the film’s US distribution and marketing nationwide. Entertainment Film Distributors has emerged as the UK distributor, with a UK release date of December 12, 2025.
The film is a delightful spoof that has been described as Downton Abbey meets Airplane! or Naked Gun, with a sprinkling of Monty Python.
First look photos:
Synopsis: A new porter Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) at an English manor forms an odd bond with the youngest daughter, Rose Davenport (Thomasin McKenzie) of a well-known UK family. A murder mystery strikes and the young man is the prime suspect. The Davenport family, headed by Lord and Lady Davenport, deals with the epic disaster of the wedding of their eldest daughter to her caddish cousin.
Other cast members include Nathan McMullen (Doctor Who), Tom Felton (the Harry Potter franchise), Katherine Waterston (Alien: Covenant), Emma Laird (Mayor of Kingstown), Tom Goodman-Hill (Baby Reindeer), Ramon Tikaram (Pennyworth), Tim McMullan (Magpie Murders), Sue Johnston (Waking the Dead), and Anna Maxwell Martin (Bleak House).
Damian has worked with Anna Maxwell Martin before in the 2022 TV mini-series A Spy Among Friends. Damian has also worked with the American independent film company/distributor Bleecker Street on the film Dream Horse.
Fackham Hall is directed by Jim O’Hanlon and co-written by comedian Jimmy Carr (who also stars) with Patrick Carr, Andrew Dawson, Steve Dawson, and Tim Inman.
Interview with Director Jim O’Hanlon
For its helmer, O’Hanlon, Fackham Hall was something he’d always dreamed of doing, combining two of his favorite genres and making one incredibly entertaining production. Reflecting on his influences and how the project came to be, he told Collider:
“I grew up watching and loving spoofs like Airplane and The Naked Gun, and I’d directed a series of three really funny spoof detective dramas called A Touch of Cloth (written by Charlie Brooker) which I’d really loved making, so when Kris (Thykier, Producer) sent me the script for Fackham Hall, I jumped at the chance to direct it. What I loved about the script was that it was both a hilariously funny, brilliantly inventive parody of British period dramas like Downton Abbey or Gosford Park, but also, at the same time, very much it’s own thing – I found myself rooting for Rose and Eric, the young couple at the centre of the forbidden romance, but at the same time laughing out loud at the ludicrousness and craziness of the shenanigans going on around them. I thought if we can get audiences doing the same, then we’re on to a winner.”
Of his impressive lineup of actors, O’Hanlon said:
“A great deal of the comedy of Fackham Hall comes from the gap between the ludicrousness of the plot and dialogue and the action, and how seriously the characters appear to be taking the whole enterprise. So it was a very deliberate choice to cast actors who could just as feasibly appear in a ‘real’, British period drama, and to get them to play everything as straight as possible, without any winking to the camera or hamming it up or reacting to the craziness going on around them in any way. We lucked out insofar as we managed to attract an absolutely stellar cast who completely jumped on board the tone I was looking for and just totally nailed it.”
“That said, it’s a very slightly heightened version of ‘straight’, because the film is a comedy first and foremost – and a very funny one at that! – so it was a very delicate balance every day trying to find the right levels of deadpan seriousness whilst still allowing the comic ridiculousness of the film to shine. Nigel Tufnell, the guitarist in Spinal Tap, famously said of his amplifier ‘this one’s got 11’; I used to tell our cast on a daily basis that ‘this one’s got ten and a half!’”
O’Hanlon explained that Fackham Hall will provide audiences with just about every type of comedy under the sun. “The film is a riotous cocktail of jokes of every kind, verbal and visual, subtle and unsubtle, silly and (occasionally!) sophisticated,” he told Collider. “We actually had an Executive Producer who counted the number of jokes in an early cut and it came to a whopping 278 – everything from daft physical gags like the manservant who makes sure the Lord of the Manor doesn’t have to lift a finger (literally!), to the Vicar, played by Jimmy Carr, whose inability to follow basic punctuation provides some of the funniest sequences of the movie. So hopefully there’s something for everyone in there, whatever their taste in comedy!”
Most of all, the director says he’s just looking forward to folks sitting back, relaxing, and laughing their butts off at an incredibly unique take on period dramas. “The film is a very affectionate parody of both period dramas and murder mystery films, so I really hope audiences come away having laughed themselves silly at the crazy, surreal goings-on at Fackham Hall, but also having found themselves fully engaged with both Eric and Rose’s forbidden romance and also the murder mystery story,” he explained. “If we can get audiences laughing their heads off and also wanting to find out what happens in the end, we’ll count that as a huge win!”