About Joe

Joe Utichi is a journalist specialising in film and entertainment. He is a regular contributor to The Sunday Times Culture, Deadline, The Guardian and Yahoo! Movies. Joe is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

As a freelancer, Joe has contributed to newspapers and magazines in the UK and abroad, including The Daily Mirror, Empire, Dazed & Confused, Grazia, Heat, Film4, Cinematical, and IGN.

He has appeared as a film commentator on radio and television for BBC Radio Five Live, BBC Local Radio (Northern Ireland, Three Counties, Jersey), Heart Radio, Capital FM, BFBS Radio, Channel 4 News and ITV News. In 2010 he presented film and dvd review programmes weekly for BFBS Radio.

Joe also provides syndicated content and consultancy for corporate clients including 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, The British Independent Film Awards and Grey Goose Vodka.

In addition to film, Joe has written on video games for IGN.com and men’s lifestyle for AskMen.com.

Joe is available for commissions and consultancy on film and entertainment. He can be contacted through this form.

Biography

Joe has worked online since 1999, initially as a hobbyist writer and the founder of a fan site dedicated to the Sega Dreamcast console. From 2003 he created and ran FilmFocus.Co.UK, a movie reviews and news site which became one of the most popular in the country, with peak audience numbers of more than 450,000 monthly uniques.

In October 2006 he was invited to launch a localised version of popular film website Rotten Tomatoes for the UK market at the newly-formed Fox Interactive Media UK Ltd. He worked with local and international teams to define the feature set of the site and bring its world-famous Tomatometer to the UK. At the time of the site’s launch in January 2007, 300,000 UK-based film fans were using it. In the following three years, that audience had risen to more than 900,000 UK monthly uniques.

While at Rotten Tomatoes, Joe delivered world-class editorial features for the local and international sites. He secured big exclusives from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Keira Knightley and Kevin Smith, conducted extended interviews with everyone from Ricky Gervais to Guillermo del Toro, and covered three successive Cannes Film Festivals.

Following the site’s acquisition in the US by Flixster Inc. in January 2010, Joe oversaw the handover and centralisation of the international offices and left to pursue a career as a freelance journalist, maintaining an association with the site as a contributing editor.

As a freelance writer Joe has contributed regularly to outlets including Sunday Times Culture, Empire, The Guardian, Yahoo! Movies and The Daily Mirror. He has hosted a regular movie and DVD review show for BFBS Radio and made appearances on BBC Radio 5 Live, Channel 4 and ITV.

Internationally, Joe’s work can be read in Spain in Fotogramas magazine and in the US on AOL’s Cinematical.com and MTV’s NextMovie.com. In addition, he has worked with film distributors including 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures and Paramount Pictures to provide internationally-syndicated interview content for films such as Prometheus, X-Men: First Class, Django Unchained and True Grit.

In 2011 he was accepted as a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

Other Career Highlights

In 2008 Joe was invited to join the jury to decide the winner of the BAFTA Best British Film award, presented to Shane Meadows’s This is England. Fellow jurors included Alfonso Cuaron, Mark Kermode and John Madden. He was invited back in 2009 with jurors including Chiwetel Ejiofor, David Morrissey and Alison Owen. This award was presented to James Marsh’s Man on Wire.

In 2010, Joe sat on a further BAFTA Film Awards jury, for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer, which was presented to Duncan Jones for his direction of Moon. His fellow jurors included Jane Goldman, Joe Wright and Finola Dwyer. He sat on the Outstanding Debut jury twice again, in 2011 and 2012.

He has also served as a jury member for two consecutive Raindance Film Festivals, in 2008 and 2009, with fellow jurors including Mick Jones, Iggy Pop and Andrea Arnold.