David Marcus Thompson (born 18 July 1950) is a British film and television producer.
Thompson moved to London in 1978, and worked for the BBC as a film programmer and documentary maker.[1] He was the founding head of BBC Films. Up until 2007, BBC Films was run and funded as a private company, with its own offices in Mortimer Street around the corner from Broadcasting House, while still under the full control of the BBC. In 1981 he filmed WOZA ALBERT!.
A recent re-structure of the division has seen it re-integrated into the main BBC Fiction department of BBC Vision, under the ultimate control of Jane Tranter. As a result, it has moved out of its independent offices into Television Centre and David Thompson, previously head of BBC Films, left to start his own film production company.
Now usually credited as 'Executive Producer', he has several projects still in production, including Revolutionary Road. He was in overall control of The History Boys (2006) and the remake of Brideshead Revisited (2008).
David Thompson's two-part BBC documentary on the films of Jean Renoir in 1993 led to him editing (with Lorraine LoBianco) an anthology of the director's letters for Faber (1994). He has also edited Scorsese on Scorsese (with Ian Cristie) for the same publisher.[1]
He is not to be confused with Canadian media mogul David Thomson or film critic David Thomson, the latter of whom is also an admirer of Jean Renoir's films.