David Meltzer
With five movies under his belt in the last year, British producer Jonathan Sothcott is turning his blossoming Shogun Films studio into a major player in the international horror space, utilising top class British actors and focussed on original ideas in a crowded and increasingly unimaginative marketplace. From high octane spy movies to an instant classic new horror villain in Doctor Plague, Shogun Films is now leading the way for UK genre movies.
During a career spanning 50 films, Sothcott built his reputation on hard-hitting gangster and revenge movies with titles such as We Still Kill The Old Way, Age of Kill, White Collar Hooligan and Vendetta – films successful enough in the Home Entertainment market to spawn sequels and franchises – White Collar Hooligan 2: England Away, Bonded By Blood 2, Rise of the Footsoldier 2 and We Still Steal The Old Way were all testament to the initial films’ success. Sothcott seemed an unlikely figurehead for all this visceral carnage with his Savile Row suits and jaunty man about Town image but the success was undeniable and The Telegraph newspaper enthused that his output had “saved the British Film industry.”
In 2020, the year in which he married his long time love, stunning actress Jeanine Nerissa, Sothcott set up Shogun Films (inspired by and branded like VHS-era studios such as Carolco and Cannon) and managed two movies during the pandemic – gangland home invasion thriller Nemesis in which Mrs Sothcott very much stole the show and ‘geezer teaser’ revenge movie Renegades, which finally brought Lee Majors and Danny Trejo together onscreen: a combination audiences never knew they needed. These films had one foot in Sothcott’s past, mixing the standard British crime movie tropes with higher concepts and more international casts.
In 2023 and 2024 Shogun found its feet, making waves with the eagerly anticipated ‘Purge with evil clowns’ horror Helloween, serial killer chiller Doctor Plague and action spy thriller Knightfall, starring Sir Roger Moore’s son Geoffrey and frequent Sothcott collaborator Ian Ogilvy. Sothcott’s undeniable talent for bringing together older casts with stunning pedigrees (his last few films have also featured Julian Glover, Bruce Payne, Nick Moran, Stephanie Beacham, Michael Brandon, Guy Henry, Michael Paré, Louis Mandylor and Peter Woodward) for tiny budget movies is doubtless influenced by his huge and obvious respect for their previous work: Lee Majors described him as “a friend for life” in a recent interview.
Their wedding made the British tabloids with Martin Kemp as Best Man but the Sothcotts are less regular on the London society scene these days, though a recent outing alongside Queen Camilla and her son Tom in Mayfair made the pages of Vogue. Instead, the couple are razor-focused on growing their movie business.
2025 is shaping up to be truly triumphant for Shogun Films – Werewolf Hunt (‘Dog Soldiers Meets Predator’), The Secret of Guy Fawkes, The Horror of Oz, Harbinger and Killer Instinct are all titles that could have been flying off the shelves in blockbuster video in the 1990s as much as they’ll resonate on streaming platforms such as Tubi and Netflix.
