Netflix to film first project at Bottle Yard
A new Netflix production is in prep at Bristol’s Bottle Yard Studios, the first time the streaming giant has utilised the facility.
The Last Bus is a 10-part Netflix Original aimed at a family audience and comes from Wildseed Studios, that specialises in young adult and kids’ programming.
The sci-fi road adventure centres on a group of mismatched schoolkids who get together to face a frightening new machine intelligence.
Paul Neafcy is the writer/creator – he previously worked with Wildseed on two series for SVoD service Fullscreen.
Filming will begin in the autumn with established directors including Lawrence Gough and Steve Hughes working alongside emerging directing talent Drew Casson and Nour Wazzi.
Miles Bullough and Jesse Cleverley (pictured, R-L) are managing director and creative director respectively of Wildseed Studios. They explained more about the project:
“Although at the top level The Last Bus is a shamelessly entertaining sci-fi romp, at another level it is a powerful eco-fable about how the younger generation must be empowered to make very different choices from the generation which preceded it when it comes to the two big challenges of the age - environmental breakdown and hugely sophisticated artificial intelligence.
“Whilst we have the technology to repair the ecosystem, vested interests seem determined to prevent the change we need to make, at the speed we need to make it. Youth climate strikes and myriad other forms of activism tell us, quite rightly, this is the issue which concerns this audience the most – after all it is their futures they are trying to save, not ours.
“It is also true that increasingly, artificial intelligence can out-think humanity - and how we choose to deploy the tools that we are now capable of inventing could well determine humanity’s fate over the next 100 years.
“We hope that by producing The Last Bus, and releasing it simultaneously to a global audience, we will have made a small contribution to the pool of courage young people will need to draw upon in the years ahead.
“We are proud and delighted that Netflix has championed the production of this ambitious, entertaining and important show and we look forward to working with the excellent team we have assembled in order to execute this to the highest possible standard.”
