Nick Ray has spent almost three decades in Cambodia where he established Hanuman Films with his wife Kulikar Sotho and they have since worked on productions big and small with Hollywood stars, television actors and presenters.
They have ranged from Angelina Jolie and Daniel Craig in “Tomb Raider,” released in 2001, to more recent work with Guy Pearce, Jeremy Clarkson and Gordon Ramsay. Hanuman has also produced its own award-winning films like “The Last Reel.”
Ray spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt about his family’s production company which includes location scouting, filming and services for National Geographic, Netflix, Paramount and the BBC.
He also urges authorities in Phnom Penh to be less sensitive about content and what foreign directors make – and instead take advantage of this country’s colonial architecture and natural beauty to promote Cambodia as a destination for filmmakers.
Competition remains fierce but Ray says budgets appear to be steady for the coming year with film, documentaries, and television series in the planning.
Major productions underway include “37 Heavens,” which offers a Hollywood account of an official visit to Cambodia and Angkor Wat in late 1967 by America’s former first lady Jackie Kennedy and her “brief but intense love affair” with a British diplomat, Lord David Harlech.
Other productions in the works include further installments of “Banged Up Abroad” – a long running program about crime and foreigners in Southeast Asia – which uses local expats as characters and has turned more than a few into minor celebrities.
There’s also a Netflix production slated for release next year about the journalists who scoured Cambodia for the British pop star and sex offender Gary Glitter after he moved here in the early 2000s. Glitter was eventually convicted of pedophilia.
