Thompson worked for the BBC from 1978 as a film programmer and documentary maker.
As a result, it 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, Origin Pictures.
[2] The films he has produced for Origin Pictures include The Awakening, An Education, and The Sense of an Ending.
He has continued to executive-produce films for the BBC, including 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 an anthology of the director's letters for Faber & Faber, Jean Renoir: Letters[1] (1994, with Lorraine LoBianco).