Barry Spikings


Barry Spikings is a British film producer who worked in Hollywood. Spikings is best known as a producer of the film The Deer Hunter, which won five Academy Awards.

Biography

Spikings was born in Boston, Lincolnshire. After leaving Boston Grammar School he joined the local newspaper, the Lincolnshire Standard, as a trainee reporter. Later he joined the Farmers' Weekly, where he won a Golden Ear award for a fifteen-minute film that he produced and directed himself.
Spikings then moved to the entertainment world. Initially, he promoted pop music festivals and later films.

British Lion and EMI

In 1972, he became the co-owner of British Lion Films; Spikings later joined EMI when it took over British Lion. For the film, The Deer Hunter, Spikings won an Academy Award for Best Picture. The film also garnered awards for several of its actors.
Filmink argued After Deeley left EMI Spikings' choice of films became more risky and less commercial, writing "Spikings deserves all the credit in the world for trying to make intelligent pictures that raised the bar for cinema. He is under-rated as a backer of classy pictures. But he felt ill-suited for his position."
In July 1979 Spikings argued "if you make a good film there is no way you won't make money."
He quit EMI in January 1983 with a year laeft to work on his contract.

Nelson Holdings

In 1985, Spikings formed a Canadian company, Nelson Holdings International, with British financier Richard Northcott, to purchase entertainment firms. Nelson later acquired the home video assets of Embassy Pictures from Coca-Cola and film production companies Galactic Films and the Spikings Corporation, and formed Nelson Entertainment. Nelson had the North American home video rights and all international rights to the output from the newly-formed Castle Rock Entertainment.
Spikings served as president of Nelson Entertainment through the early 1990s. Afterwards, he formed a production partnership with Eric Pleskow.

Filmography

British Lion

  • The Wicker Man
  • Don't Look Now
  • A Doll's House
  • Who?
  • The Internecine Project
  • The Land That Time Forgot
  • Conduct Unbecoming
  • Ransom
  • The Man Who Fell to Earth
  • Nickelodeon
  • ''At the Earth's Core''

    EMI Films

  • Nickelodeon
  • The Greatest
  • The Deep
  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  • The Cheap Detective
  • Silver Bears
  • Sweeney 2
  • Warlords of Atlantis
  • Convoy
  • The Driver
  • Death on the Nile
  • The Deer Hunter
  • Arabian Adventure
  • The Crown Prince
  • Can't Stop the Music
  • The Awakening
  • Times Square
  • The Elephant Man
  • The Jazz Singer
  • The Mirror Crack'd
  • Honky Tonk Freeway
  • Evil Under the Sun
  • Britannia Hospital
  • Frances
  • Second Thoughts
  • Bad Boys
  • Tender Mercies
  • Strange Invaders
  • Cross Creek
  • ''Handgun''