Owen’s first feature film, Ordinary Love, starring Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville and directed by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn was released in December 2019. Owen is working on second feature, Breathing for producer Brian Falconer.

He is also currently working on new play commissions for the Donmar Warehouse and for Michael Grandage Productions.

Owen has a commission with BBC Northern Ireland/ Out of Orbit Productions for an original TV series in development.

His new play Fire Below premiered at the Lyric Belfast and The Abbey Theatre, Dublin in November 2017. Quietly received its US premiere in New York in July 2016. It was first produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin where it was nominated for Best New Play at the Irish Times Theatre Awards. In 2013 the Abbey Production played at the Traverse Theatre during the Edinburgh Festival and transferred to the SOHO Theatre, London. Owen McCafferty’s recent play Death of a Comedian was a co-production between The Abbey, The Lyric, Belfast and SOHO and was shown in Dublin, Belfast and London. His previous play  Unfaithful was produced at The Traverse Theatre in 2014, to great acclaim and again in London in August 2016 starring Niamh Cusack and Sean Campion.

Owen has recently written the libretti for 2 short operas – May Contain Flash Photography and lovegolglove. Other recent work includes new play Absence of Women, produced by the Lyric Theatre Belfast in February 2010 before transferring to the Tricycle Theatre in London. Owen directed his own version of Antigone for Prime Cut in Belfast in autumn 2008. Shoot the Crow, which was first staged at the Druid Theatre, Galway, has had a number of further productions including a London production at The Trafalgar Studio that was nominated for Best New Comedy at Olivier Awards. Owen’s version of JP Miller’s Days of Wine & Roses for Scamp Film and Theatre and RJK Productions, directed by Peter Gill and starring Anne Marie Duff and Peter MacDonald, had a highly successful first run at the Donmar Warehouse and has since been produced many times domestically and abroad.  His play Titanic (Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry 1912) was the inaugural production at The MAC Belfast in 2012.

Previous work includes Scenes From The Big Picture at the National Theatre which won the John Whiting Award, the Meyer Whitworth Award and the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for New Playwriting. The play was revived in Belfast by Prime Cut in 2007 and has had several international productions. Closing Time was produced for the National Theatre’s Loft Season. Further work includes a production of Cold Comfort which Owen directed himself and brought to the London fringe, an adaptation of Ionesco’s The Chairs, No Place Like Home and Court Room No 1 for Tinderbox Theatre Company in Belfast, and Mojo Mickybo for Kabosh Theatre Company, a play which has been revived many times at home and abroad. His plays for radio include The Elasticity of Supply and Demand and The Law of Diminished Returns.

A film based on Mojo Mickybo has been produced by Working Title, directed by Terry Loane.