Their movies have made $1.6 billion worldwide. They're the toast of London and the envy of Hollywood. And you've probably never heard of them.

Tim Bevan is lost. “It gets so bloody dark in England!” he complains, laughing into his mobile phone as he drives through the suburban murk toward Working Title Films’ Christmas party. “At 4 o’clock in the afternoon, pitch black. So miserable. I’m going up to New Zealand next week, away from this fucking rain!”

Meanwhile, on a well-marked motorway, his partner Eric Fellner steers his smoothly humming BMW M5 through the countryside toward Babington House, the weekend getaway for the London club Soho House. “Fortunately, I know my way in the dark and in the daylight,” Fellner says in his plummy baritone. “Tim doesn’t.”

As usual, the two are taking different routes to the same destination. Every other year, Bevan, 43, and Fellner, 41, throw a massive party for the entire British film industry. This December’s holiday affair, though, is strictly for their 33 staffers, including a contingent of five who flew nearly 6,000 miles from their Hollywood outpost to join the celebration.

As 2000 drew to a close, the duo stood together in the candlelit manor hall, yule logs blazing in the corner, and gave hearty thanks for a rousing good year. Their movies were the usual eclectic lot: Modest, smart, and very entertaining, they included Stephen Frears’s hip High Fidelity, starring John Cusack; Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?, starring George Clooney; and stage director Stephen Daldry’s smash film debut, Billy Elliot. All three movies wound up on many critics’ top-ten lists, and Billy Elliot, the entry from their new, low-budget division, WT², broke out big time, a sleeper hit and an Oscar contender. “We try to make films that will titillate you,” Fellner says, “on an intellectual level and on a popcorn level.”

After nine years as cochairmen of Working Title, Bevan and Fellner can boast one of the best track records in Hollywood. Their movies have grossed $1.6 billion worldwide and garnered 21 Academy Award nominations; Dead Man Walking, Fargo, and Elizabeth walked off with four Oscars among them. They have ongoing relationships with sought-after filmmakers who keep coming back, including Daldry, the Coens, Frears, and Richard Curtis, the author of two of their biggest hits, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill. “When money wasn’t entirely in place, they bankrolled Billy Elliot,” Daldry says. “I’m going to continue my deal with them because they’re too good to work for. They spoil you.”

If you’ve never heard of Bevan and Fellner, credit their English reserve. While they nab plenty of ink on their side of the pond (Bevan is raising his eight-year-old daughter with his ex-wife, Joely Richardson, the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave), they’re horrified at the idea of grabbing the spotlight like, say, their American counterpart, Miramax Films’ larger-than-life Harvey Weinstein. (Working Title is often called the Miramax of Europe.) But Bevan and Fellner do dine at the top of the British film industry food chain. They have more money, develop more projects (some 30 films), land more big books (such as Bridget Jones’s Diary), and hire the best people.

“They are energetic—not naive, not arty-farty, up their own ass, ‘Let’s make a film that will please six people in Hampstead or the Upper East Side of New York,’ ” says Hugh Grant, who has starred in three Working Title films. “It’s extraordinary to walk into a British film company on Oxford Street—trendy London architecture and all the female staff unbelievably beautiful—and it’s run with complete L.A. efficiency, instead of it being a bunch of ex-BBC, very nice amateurs.”