HARDY HISTORIES
Wicker Pictures
Dr. Justin Hardy, Dr. Dominic Hardy, Dr. Chris Nunn
Wicker Pictures emerges from the burning legacy of The Wicker Man, 1973, directed by Justin and Dominic's father, Robin Hardy.
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Joined by Dr. Chris Nunn, together, the trio have set about breathing new life into the cult classic film, and the world it created. From solving long standing myths to creating new ones, Wicker Pictures is a multimodal ​company telling new stories from a world where myth meets reality.
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The legacy of Wicker
From 1973 to 2025, The Wicker Man still burns.
The Wicker Man holds significance for many, but no one knows this greater than half brothers Justin and Dominic. The eponymous 'Children of the Wicker Man' watched their family life go up in flames during and after the film's release. Their father gone, their mother unappreciated for her crucial involvement in the film. From financial and familial tragedy to cultural phenomenon, the legacy of The Wicker Man is as complex as it is intriguing.
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Robin Hardy transformed the frontier of horror over 50 years ago in making the folk-horror, now cult-classic, The Wicker Man. Plagued by financial woes, inexperience and a failed attempt to burry the film by its own studio, British Lion, the film was almost completely unnoticed; the embers of The Wicker Man almost faded into the sky.
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After its initial box-office failure, one that tore the Hardy family apart, the film later became a celebrated and recognised cult-classic. Despite poorly received sequels and remakes, The Wicker Man remains a strong pillar within the British and worldwide horror genre; It's pagan, ritualistic world still beloved by fans, academics and filmmakers to this day.
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After Robin Hardy's lost papers were returned to Justin, the half-brothers, along with Professor Chris Nunn, began working on a feature documentary centred on the film, its inception and its burning legacy. What began as an insightful documentary, utilising new sources to uncover hidden truth's and stories behind their fathers film, soon transformed into something else entirely.
Still burning with Wicker lore and stories, Children of the Wicker Man is a reflective, intimate and poignant film about trauma, fatherhood and reconciliation. ​Completed in 2023, the film was lauded with recognition from a variety of festivals.
Experiencing first hand the fervent enthusiasm around the world for anything Wicker, and with their own burning passion reignited, the trio are expanding their involvement in this world. Fiction films, more documentaries, books and even graphic novels, the Wicker Man burns on.
Children of the Wicker Man Trailer
About
Wicker Pictures
At Wicker Pictures our goal is to expand the world of Wicker and more generally folk horror, through a variety of avenues and storytelling mediums.
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The company emanates ​from the legacy of The Wicker Man and the academic backgrounds of our team at Wicker Pictures. As a result, Wicker Pictures is predicated on the precision of academic research and an enthusiasm for impactful storytelling and art.
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Our team at Wicker Pictures is comprised of academics, professors and researchers, emerging from the arenas of film, history and art history. The majority of our team are presently teaching at Universities, inspiring and educating future generations of students, all whilst involved in the production of past and future projects here at Wicker Pictures.
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Our goal at Wicker Pictures is to expand and diversify the world of folk horror, including but not singularly, the world of The Wicker Man. Across documentaries, books and graphic novels, the myths of Summarisle are to be explored.
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Wicker Pictures also strives to tell new, independent stories, outside of The Wicker Man, inside the world of folk horror. Including new feature fiction films, Hammer documentaries, books and more.
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Grounded in a fusion of academic research , myth, and horror, Wicker Pictures is premised on the desire to bring new horror stories to audiences, through a variety of different forms. It works with alongside Carly Pictures, which is named after and dedicated to Caroline Hardy, the unsung and unrecognised executive producer of The Wicker Man.
Read more about Carly Pictures here: ​​​​
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Team
Dr Justin Hardy
​Justin Hardy is a multi-award-winning historian filmmaker, having won the first ever Royal Television Society award for best historical film in 2001, and since then won three times more. He has been nominated for BAFTA and EMMY twice and won numerous other international awards for his work that has spanned drama and documentary. His feature documentary, The Green Park (2016) won two major international awards, including The London Independent and Monaco Film Festival.
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Justin has worked for a variety of channels: BBC, Channel 4, ITV, ARTE, PBS, Discovery and CNN, directing actors such as Sir Lenny Henry, Sir Christopher Lee, Sir John Mills, Amanda Redman, Olivia Williams, Iain Glen, Ian McDiarmid, Roger Daltrey, Sunetra Sarker and Geraldine James.
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In 2022, he was awarded a PhD in history and film, in which he defined for the first time the genre created within historical drama-documentary. He teaches at UCL across both film and history, designing three new programmes for BA Media, Creative Arts and Humanities, and Public History, situated in the new campus at UCL East.
Dr Dominic Hardy
Professor Dominic Hardy is the executor for the Robin Hardy estate. He is professor of history and historiography of art of Québec-Canada at UQAM, and director of the LAB-A, digital lab for the study of art histories in Québec.
He is a specialist of satire in the visual arts. Since 2021, he has guided a research project that seeks to develop methodologies for the study of histories of visual arts in the communities that have built the history of Montreal.
Dr. Chris Nunn...
Dr Chris Nunn is Assistant Professor of Film at the Russell Group University of Birmingham (top 20 in UK; top 100 internationally). His research specialises in filmmaking education, and former students have gone on to win at the BAFTAS and RTS, as well as be nominated for Grierson and student Academy Awards. His research extends into cult film and television. His recent collaborations with Justin have brought forth Children of the Wicker Man, and An Ill Wind, with many more to come.
Dr. Alison Palmer
Alison is an award-winning producer with 20+ years of broadcast production experience, her work spanning film, TV and documentary. Prior to setting up Game Changer she was Development Producer on Channel 4’s groundbreaking documentary WHEN FOOTBALL BANNED WOMEN (2017), where she built on existing relationships with Lioness icons such as Jill Scott, Alex Scott and Ellen White. More recently she was an Associate Producer on CHILDREN OF THE WICKER MAN (2024), in which she helped to discover the uncredited woman behind the folk horror classic. She is currently in production on feature film AN ILL WIND (2026) as a Producer. As Creative Producer, Alison sources, develops and delivers universal human stories from the worlds of sport and the arts, never losing credibility or the support of the communities in which she finds them.
James Gordon
James is a recent BA English and Film graduate from The University of Birmingham. Since finishing his undergraduate degree in 2024, James has joined our team as a 2nd Assistant Director on our upcoming fiction film, An Ill Wind. During and after the production, James has become an integral part of our team, both within Wicker Pictures and throughout The Film Academies as a whole. Following An Ill Wind through post-production as an Assistant Producer, to being our sole Producer for Academy Pictures, James has a passion for filmmaking and storytelling.
