John Lithgow’s ‘Giant’ Producers Brian & Dayna Lee Strike First-Look Deal With London’s Royal Court Theatre – Breaking Baz  

EXCLUSIVE: London’s Royal Court Theatre has entered into an exclusive first-look deal with New York-based producers Brian and Dayna Lee.

The pair helped usher Mark Rosenblatt’s hit debut play Giant, featuring a blistering portrait of novelist Roald Dahl’s antisemitism by John Lithgow, from Sloane Square to the West End to Broadway, where it opens in March.

Will Young, the Royal Court’s Executive Director told us that the new long-term arrangement, which concerns work staged in the Court’s main Jerwood Theatre Downstairs stage, “felt like a really natural progression” in the relationship with the Lee’s AF Creative Media theater and film production company, which the Canadian-born couple run from their base in New York.

The deal with the Lees will bring the Royal Court “more muscle and firepower,” said Young, who runs the landmark theater with Artistic Director David Byrne.

Giant, with Lithgow leading and Nicholas Hytner directing, will begin performances at the Shubert Theater from March 11, 2026, for a 16-week limited run with the Lees producing alongside Stephanie Kramer and Nicole Kramer, Josh Fielder, Robyn Goodman and the Royal Court Theatre. 

The Lees were up with the lark to chat about the major first-look contract with the Royal Court, which is something to cheer about at a time when the arts are cash-strapped and under attack, and under pressure due to economic and political forces. Look at what ABC late-night chat-show host Jimmy Kimmel was dragged through. His return to his Jimmy Kimmel Live! show Tuesday night was a triumph of grace and biting wit. Well worth checking out the show’s feed on YouTube and Deadline extensive coverage. 

However, I quickly wanted to ask if they had plans to be involved in any screen adaptation of Rosenblatt’s Giant play? Brian agreed that “it would be phenomenal,” adding: I hope it happens.”

Dayna confirmed there had been such conversations, “but there’s nothing to announce in terms of film as of yet.”

What kind of conversations, I wondered? “We’re at the dreaming stage,” said Brian. “We have big dreams,” added Dayna.

‘Tenacious Canadians’

“We’re tenacious Canadians,” Brian interjected, as Dayna explained that they moved to New York City 13 years ago without knowing a single person ”other than each other.” She added: “We just hold onto that mentality that anything can happen.”

As far as the deal with the Royal Court’s concerned, Brian said that “overall there’s a first look in which we’re able to support the Court and the new writers, and help them do what they do and ensure the legacy of the Court.”

Brian explained that on a season-by-season basis they will identify the plays that could have “commercial viability,” adding: “That’s not necessarily just New York. That’s other places in Europe, Canada and all around the world. At the heart of it is maintaining the Court’s audience and then amplifying what they do so well.”

They seem fearless in their determination to support theater from the ground up. Their motive in supporting the Royal Court, Brian told us, is that about “supporting stories that mean something to us,” something that is the case “in all the work we do across the board.”

He adds: “Because you sit with these shows for so long, they have to sit with who you are on some level.” There are risks, but “like any good relationship, there’s risk and there’s hopefully reward.”

He then cited Oscar Hammerstein II’s ’s famous observation about what constitutes a producer. Here’s the full quote which I want to run in full here:

“I think only people in the theater know what a producer is. The public does not know. It knows a writer writes, and an actor acts, and a director tells them what to do. A producer raises money. Well, he does, and in some cases that’s all he does. But the workers in the theater know that this is not the real thing. A producer is a rare, paradoxical genius – hard-headed, soft-hearted, cautious, reckless, a hopeful innocent in fair weather, a stern pilot in stormy weather, a mathematician who prefers to ignore the laws of mathematics and trust intuition, an idealist, a realist, a practical dreamer, a sophisticated gambler, a stage-struck child. That’s a producer.”

Speaking to different generations

“If you have a cohort of people who love the thing as much as you do, you can weather it,” said Brian.

Dayna nodded in agreement.

“We’ve been developing shows for eight-and-a-half years and the one thing we always talk about as younger producers coming into this industry is to just always being cognisant that there’s a way to do things and to make sure that we are speaking to a legacy generation and a new generation of theater-goers,” she said. “What is igniting that intense conversation in the digital space and in real life and how can we create a magnifying glass to replicate that in some way on stage, so that those conversations can continue in a thoughtful way?”

 And that commitment shows in some of the choices they’ve made. They scored well with their first producing challenge, Duncan Macmillan’s great play ,People,Places and Things starring an electrifying Denise Gough. “We got married, we quit our jobs, we saw People,Places and Things , and we looked at each and said:”We want to do that!,” Dayna exclaimed.

“Whatever People, Places and Things did to an audience, that’s what we wanted to do,” added Brian.

Other shows the pair has also co-produced include Funny Girl and director Marianne Elliott’s sublime revivals of Company and Angels in America, and they also supported the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s successful production of Fiddler on the Roof, which transferred to the Barbican.

The couple also executive produced director Ben Shirinian’s upcoming movie The Housewife starring Naomi Watts, Luke Evans, Michael Imperioli and Tye Sheridan, and filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar’s The Painted Bride with Jeremy Allen White, Mandy Patinkin and Isabella Rossellini.

Young welcomed the first-look partnership with Brian and Dayna Lee, saying it is “a significant thing to do.”

He explained, however, that the Royal Court will continue to work with other producing partners such as, for instance, Sonia Friedman Productions and Playful Productions, but noted “a first-look deal is a bigger gesture and that had to be with the right partners.”

Young added that the Lees “absolutely understood the mission and values of the Court, and have been really caring about the artists and the way we look after them.”

He said it felt “weird” to look back on Giant and know it has become “this sort of absolute monster blockbuster that’s heading into Broadway.”

At the time Young and Lees were talking, the project was simply “a play by writer who’d never written a play before…” The Lees knew they had a good play and had taken time to develop and workshop it, but “they didn’t know it would become the Royal Court’s hottest ticket in a long time,” said Young. “We weren’t looking at something where you went, ‘Well this is obviously a surefire hit.’ It feels like it now that it’s on this march to Broadway.”

Young noted that Giant opened in the first season he and Byrne were contracted to run the Royal Court, both having come from London’s celebrated New Diorama Theatre, which was founded by Byrne and where Young was executive director.

“We were completely new,” he recalled. “We hadn’t even programmed a season. We had this spiky play by an unknown writer, we had Nick Hytner on board, we had John Lithgow on board… and we had to go to [Brian and Dayna] and say, ‘We need support putting the show on. It’s a big risk for us. It’s our first season.’

“The leap they took with us then was something that we remain incredibly grateful for, and more than that, they’ve just continued to be really lovely to work with.”

The more Young and Byrne met with and talked with Brian and Dayna, the more conversations they had about expanding the relationship. “We were looking for ways to bring more resource into investing in the pipeline, supporting our development of new plays, and being able to resource more ambitious work on stage,” said Young. “It feels like quite a natural step.”

“In lot of ways it will bring more investment directly into the work and in the development of new plays. It’s also about re-energizing that muscle that goes into the Royal Court.”

Right now, Young said, they have a play, Cow | Deer, playing at the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs that has no words. “It’s just the day in the life of a cow and a deer, and I adore that piece of theater,” he added. “We’re working with National Theater of Greece on it and it may well tour Europe, but we also have work that absolutely feels like it’s in that place of just ahead of the mainstream. It feels to me like we have more muscle and more firepower with Brian and Dayna supporting us.”

Shows that transfer from the Royal Court to the West End and NYC means that the Royal Court’s impact is larger and is of “more value to more stakeholders.”

That’s important, Young stressed, because “when there is that commercial source of income for the Court, we can make the absolute most of it and make sure that money is then going back into the future pipeline.”

The Royal Court’s new season, celebrating it’s 70th anniversary in 2026, will be announced later in October, and while a range of producing partners will collaborate on some productions, Young said. They will work “most closely with Brian and Dayna on a raft of work we developed,” and between them they’ll discuss which shows might require extra investment.

Also, it’s vital, that theater has champions to support it during these challenging times, “Particularly for a venue like ours,” said Young, “Where our history and our mission are so tied up with an absolute commitment to free speech, to free artistic expression for the artists on our stages.”