about Michael Cowan
The Hon. Prof. Michael Cowan was born in Ghana West Africa and grew up in West Africa, South Africa, Far East – Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, India, Korea and Latin America. His father owned a worldwide timber business, and his Italian Mother comes from an old military family, the Boscardis’. Michael is fluent in Italian and French and speaks some Spanish.
Michael came to England at the age of 8 and was educated at private school; having obtained 8 ‘O’ levels and 4 ‘A’ levels, he went to film school to become a screenwriter – The London International Film School. While in film school Michael ran a bartering business and produced and co-produced with other well-known UK film schools, award winning shorts, documentaries, and films.
Between 1990 -1993, on leaving film school, Michael set up Iguana TV, with his then partner Justin Bodle, who went on to found Power Television, one of the leading independent television production and TV sales companies in the UK with productions such as Henry 8th, The Day of The Triffids, Crusoe, Flood, Ice, The Virgin Queen etc.
In 1994, Michael set up Spice Factory. Armed with little more than a phone and a fax machine, the company began life in a small attic room above Brighton based D’Arcy’s Seafood Restaurant, owned by Michael’s mother.
In the first year, Michael wrote a computer game based on Dante’s Inferno called Endgame, which secured an output deal with Warner Interactive for US$4M. The former computer games publishing label Epic Multimedia Group headed by James Braithwaite OBE, that floated on AIM for around £15M in 1996, bought 51% of Spice Factory.
From 1994 to today Michael has very much been a creative media entrepreneur combining business skills, creativity and foresight having produced over 115+ films and
TV series from big studio budget movies of US$65M down to low budget indie films under US$1M.
Michael created one of the first UK film funds raising more than US$350M, producing films such as Lord of War, Merchant Of Venice, Head In The Clouds, The Statement, TV series Napoleon, Nero, Mother Teresa. To mention but a few. He founded sales agent Archlight and helped Nicholas Chartier in forming Voltage and founded Bulldog Film Distribution.
Recently he has been head hunted to grow Blue-Eyes Film and Distribution as a boutique film and television sales agent, production and digital distribution company based in UK, Spain and North America.
Michael is a very creative businessman and an expert in structured financing in the media business.
A man of many hats who likes telling stories.
