Producer Rick Dugdale is the co-founder of Enderby Entertainment, an independent film finance and production company.  The company, founded in 2006 by Dugdale along with his partner, writer-director-producer Daniel Petrie, Jr., is named for Dugdale’s home town of Enderby, British Columbia (pop. 2,932.)  Dugdale, who serves as the company’s president and CEO, oversees all aspects of business, finance and production for Enderby and spearheads the company’s worldwide relationships with its community of investors.  In addition, Dugdale is the CEO of Tony-Seven Films, Enderby Entertainment’s genre division.  Dugdale personally supervises each Enderby Entertainment film as the in-person, on-set producer; he also serves as executive producer on all Tony-Seven Films projects.

Most recently, Dugdale served as producer of Enderby Entertainment’s upcoming feature film An Ordinary Man starring Ben Kingsley and Hera Hilmar.  The film, written and directed by Brad Silberling and shot entirely on location in and around Belgrade, Serbia, is slated for release in 2017.

Prior to An Ordinary Man, Dugdale produced Enderby Entertainment’s Blackway, starring Anthony Hopkins, Julia Stiles, Alexander Ludwig, Ray Liotta and Hal Holbrook.  The film, directed by Sweden’s Daniel Alfredson, based on the novel by Castle Freeman, Jr. and adapted for the screen by Joseph Gangemi & Gregory Jacobs, had its world premiere at the 72nd Venice Film Festival on September 11, 2015, and was released in June 2016 by Electric Entertainment, who is also handling international distribution of An Ordinary Man.

Previously for Enderby, Dugdale produced Dawn Patrol starring Scott Eastwood, Jeff Fahey and Rita Wilson, and Rosemont, starring Grace Zabriskie, Brad Dourif, Michael Gross, Ayla Kell and Brendan Michael Coughlin; both films were directed by Daniel Petrie, Jr.  Dugdale also produced About Cherry starring Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco, Heather Graham and Dev Patel, co-written and directed by Stephen Elliott.  For Tony-Seven Films, Dugdale served as executive producer on The Speak, Vile and 5 Souls and as producer on A Haunting at Silver Falls, No Tell Motel and Blood Shed. 

Dugdale’s career started in his native British Columbia, where he gained extensive experience in physical production, working at all budget levels in feature film, television commercials and music videos.  During this period, Dugdale was responsible for negotiating with local and provincial governments some of the most complex and extensive location filming agreements to date.  Dugdale also gained experience in public sector financing and investor relations while working in oil, gas and uranium markets.

In 2003, Dugdale joined Daniel Petrie, Jr. & Company as Vice President, Production before becoming a full partner in the company in 2004.  In the motion picture industry, the first decade of the 21st Century saw an acceleration in the growth of independent production to fill the vacuum left by the major studios, who each year became increasingly focused on making fewer and bigger-budgeted so-called “tent-pole” movies, a trend that continues to this day.  At the same time, the transition from celluloid to digital image capture made some aspects of filmmaking radically less expensive, lowering the medium’s costs of entry; this at a time when, paradoxically, the costs of making studio-style, tent-pole movies continued their seemingly limitless escalation.  On the distribution side, time-honored practices of releasing those tent-pole movies were joined by release patterns that increasingly allowed more independent films to find audiences.  Observing that many indie films seemed to be made for no better reason than that the resources were available, Dugdale and Petrie believed that an indie company that put the emphasis back on story, on the creative side, and on transparency, on the financial side, could thrive, which led them to found Enderby Entertainment.

Dugdale is particularly proud of Enderby Entertainment’s involvement with the Austin Film Festival and Conference.  In 2012, the Austin Film Festival announced the addition of a new “Enderby Entertainment Award” to the festival’s screenwriting competition.  The new award is open to feature screenplays in all genres with an original concept and distinctive voice that can be independently produced with budget under ten million dollars.  Finalists and winners are selected by Dugdale and Petrie.