Veteran British film producer Jeremy Thomas has died at the age of 77, prompting tributes from across the film industry. His family announced that he passed away peacefully at his home in Oxfordshire on 11 September 2026, surrounded by loved ones, with the news breaking on the final day of the 83rd Venice Film Festival, where he had a producing credit on Werner Herzog's Bucking Fastard.

Thomas amassed more than 80 credits over a career spanning five decades, most notably Bernardo Bertolucci's Oscar-winning The Last Emperor, which won nine Academy Awards in 1987, as well as Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Sexy Beast and Crash. Born in 1949 into a filmmaking family, he founded the independent production company Recorded Picture Company in the 1970s and later Hanway Films in 1998. Figures including Sony Pictures Classics' Tom Bernard, filmmaker Whit Stillman, Amazon's Scott Foundas and Edinburgh Film Festival's Paul Ridd praised him as a generous, singular and influential figure in cinema.