From Script to Scream: Stephanie Allain on Producing Blumhouse’s Latest Nightmare, “The Woman in the Yard”
Stephanie Allain is a trailblazing producer. She was the Senior Vice President of Production at Columbia Pictures, where she oversaw films such as Boyz N The Hood and Desperado. From there, she became the President of Henson Pictures and eventually launched her production company, Homegrown Films. Homegrown Films is behind Hustle & Flow, Beyond the Lights, and Exhibiting Forgiveness, a film Allain is deeply proud of.
Producer Hsinyi Liu on Forging a Path From Taiwan to “Fleabag” & “The Ballad of Wallis Island”
Moving halfway around the world to live and work in a different culture and language presents inevitable challenges, but there is also a wealth of opportunities available to those who leave the familiar behind and immerse themselves abroad. This was the case for Taiwan-born and raised producer Hsinyi Liu, who learned the joys available to those willing to make the leap when she relocated to London more than two decades ago.
In an attempt at a compromise between her family’s expectations of a financially stable career and her own creative impulses,
Reel Returns: Connecticut’s Film Investment Fuels Economic Growth in a Competitive State of Play
The evening before my conversation with Jonathan Black, a co-founder of the Connecticut Film and TV Alliance (CTFTVA), he was attending a hearing in Hartford. The Finance, Revenue, and Bonding Committee was listening to public testimony on Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont’s proposed film tax credit cut from 30% to 25%, a move that could strike a devastating blow to the state’s film and television community.
Black, a Georgia native, has roots in Hollywood,
Inside “The Residence”: Creator Paul William Davies on Crafting a White House Whodunit
The Residence, produced by Shondaland for Netflix, is the much-anticipated whodunnit that is Shonda Rhimes’ second show set in the White House. The first, of course, was another beloved, Kerry Washington-led Scandal, which dealt in the shadowy world of Washington’s Olivia Pope, the queen of fixers. Now Rhimes and her collaborator Paul William Davies return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to follow Uzo Aduba’s Cordelia Cupp, a world-famous detective and obsessive birder,
SXSW 2025: Tapping Into Texas’s Vast Potential to Become the Next Cinematic Frontier
This year’s SXSW film festival in Austin blew into town with a considerable tailwind of enthusiasm for the Lone Star state’s film and TV future. Every state in the union can claim unique cultures, geographies, and mythologies, but there’s no disputing that Texas looms very large in our collective cultural imagination. It’s a state that takes very seriously the notion that it’s really a country.
Texas’s hold on our imagination is evident in how many great films and TV series are set there (whether they’re actually filmed there or not—we’ll get to that in a second),
From “Elf” to “Blue Bloods”: Veteran Producer Santiago Quiñones on the Unique Advantages of Filming in New York
Santiago Quiñones was a co-executive producer on Blue Bloods, CBS’s long-running police procedural that followed the Reagan family through their dynastic run within the NYPD. Quiñones, a born and bred New Yorker, joined the show assuming that, like previous projects, he might be moving on after a little while for another opportunity. Instead, he stayed for a decade, which kept him home alongside his family as his children grew and his colleagues became extended family members.
Producer Joseph Patel Explores Sly Stone’s Life & Legacy in “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)”
Prodigiously gifted songwriter/singer/arranger/producer/bandleader/keyboardist/guitarist Sly Stone gets his well-deserved close-up in documentary makers Joseph Patel and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson‘s SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). After earning an Academy Award for Summer of Soul, producer Patel and director QuestLove decided to deep-dive into the life and music of the man whose multi-racial band once thrilled hippies and Black audiences alike with ingenious funk-pop anthems including “I Want to Take You Higher,”
Oscar-Nominated Producer Maria Carlota Bruno on Recreating a Transcendent Heroine in “I’m Still Here”
In 1964, a coup d’état overthrew Brazilian president João Goulart, initiating a military dictatorship that lasted until 1985. The former congressman Rubens Paiva went into self-exile at the time of the coup but returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1970, where he settled into a pleasant household near Leblon Beach with his wife, Eunice Paiva, and their five children. Rubens continued quietly supporting dissident Brazilian expatriates and, in January 1971, was arrested and disappeared during a military raid.
“The Brutalist” Producers on the Demands and Delights of Building a Masterpiece
“Everybody was paddling in the same direction to support Brady’s vision, from the producers, the cast, the crew,” says The Brutalist producer Nick Gordon. “It’s a very special movie, and we’re glad it’s connecting with audiences in the way that it is.”
On a call with Gordon and fellow producer Trevor Matthews, the tandem behind Brookstreet Pictures explained how they helped director Brady Corbet create his masterpiece. At Brookstreet,
Oscar-Nominated “Elvis” Producer Schuyler Weiss on What’s Right About Korea’s Filmmaking Industry
Schuyler Weiss is not long back to his home on Australia’s Gold Coast and so he is still mulling over the takeaways from his trip to the 29th Busan International Film Festival when he sits down to talk. The experience certainly sounds like an eye-opener.
The Oscar-nominated producer of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis was making his first visit to South Korea for the event – which bills itself as Asia’s largest film festival and which ran from October 2-11.
From “Kill Bill” to Martin Scorsese to “Shōgun”: Producer Eriko Miyagawa on Her Hero’s Journey
A lucky break followed by a realization that the road ahead still won’t be a smooth march toward success is a pattern recognizable by many in the entertainment industry and beyond. The fortuitous happenstance for Eriko Miyagawa came in the form of an email saying that Quentin Tarantino was shooting in Beijing and looking for someone fluent in English and Japanese. This felt like an emphatically good turn of fortune for the smart, ambitious Miyawaga.
Regional Sustainability Advisor Clara George on Greening Netflix’s “Virgin River”
A film or TV set is usually powered almost exclusively by diesel generators. These generators were loud, hot, large, environmentally unfriendly, and often used at such a low capacity that they were practically idling. They weren’t just bad for the environment; they were wasteful and highly unpleasant.
This is increasingly no longer the case, as new technologies come onto the market and new, less fuel-dependent approaches to how filmmakers and TV creators get their shots become possible.
Crime, Crazy Rich Rom-Coms, and More: Producer Janice Chua on Bringing Asian Stories to the World
Raised in a working-class Chinese family in Singapore, Janice Chua says, “Like every Asian person, I grew up with Hong Kong martial arts movies that inspired so much of my imagination. There was a sense of excitement and pride in those action-heavy films with crazy sound effects.”
But her world changed when she encountered Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which “just came across as very poetic…and the way women were portrayed was very different.
From Mumbai to Batam: The Unexpected Journey of Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man”
Actor-turned-director Dev Patel, best known for his breakthrough role in Slumdog Millionaire, received a well-earned standing ovation for his directorial feature debut, Monkey Man, at the SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin Texas this past March. His thrilling, kinetic debut went on to win the Headliners Audience Award.
The fight-filled action epic produced by Get Out and Us director Jordan Peele was inspired by the story of the half-monkey,
The Rewards of the Craft: Emmy Nominees on the Joys & Challenges of Television
We had the pleasure of hosting two panels this year—check out our second panel here— ahead of the 2024 Emmy Awards, which will be held live on ABC on Sunday, September 15, from 8-11 ET. Like last year, we sat down with some nominees from some great, disparate, challenging shows. In our first panel, Planet Earth III composers Jacob Shea and Sara Barone (nominated for episode 6,
All the World’s a Stage: The Team Behind “Sing Sing” on Crafting a Powerful Human Drama
Sing Sing screenwriters Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley are unusual, even in the world of indies. They immerse themselves in the world of the story they want to tell for years, in this case a drama program in a maximum-security prison. They surround professional performers like Colman Domingo in the case of Sing Sing, with real-life inhabitants of that world, with a seamless naturalism that straddles documentary and narrative filmmaking.
“Fancy Dance” Producer Heather Rae on Putting Together Erica Tremblay’s Moving New Film
For Heather Rae, it’s all about heart. The award-winning producer of Frozen River, Wind Walkers, and Tallulah, and the director/producer of the acclaimed documentary Trudell, believes her place is at the heart of a production. And just as important, Rae is driven to make films with heart.
Fancy Dance, Rae’s latest film, now streaming on Apple TV+,
“Silo” Creator Graham Yost Unseals the Secrets of Season 1
Graham Yost had his work cut out for him when he set out to tackle author Hugh Howey’s apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy series “Silo,” all of which are set in the titular structure (none of Howey’s books are actually titled “Silo”) and deal with the society that lives within it’s 144 heavily monitored floors. The denizens of the Silo live in a claustrophobic brutalist tower outfitted with retrofuturistic touches that include clunky computers, a large screen in the cafeteria showing what appears to be a denuded,
“Shakespeare but with football”: Director Matthew Hamachek Unpacks “The Dynasty: New England Patriots”
Director and executive producer Matthew Hamachek calls The Dynasty, the 10-part docu-series now streaming on Apple TV+, “Shakespeare but with football.”
He’s not overstating it. As Dynasty charts the rise and fall of the six-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots over the course of 20 years, dazzling on-field highlights are deftly layered with the documentary’s themes of male ego, betrayal, the price of success, and the corporatization of sports at the expense of players.
Pioneering Producer Auchara Kijkanjanas on Animating Thailand’s Entertainment Industry
A pioneer of animation in Thailand, producer Auchara Kijkanjanas is no stranger to copyright infringement. The founder and head of Big Brain Studio produced the nation’s first big animation hit, which was pirated shortly after it was released. Hence, Kijkanjanas takes both personal and professional satisfaction from witnessing the changes in attitude and behavior toward intellectual property that have occurred in subsequent years. She also holds out hope that something like Thailand’s generous and successful production incentives for live-action projects from overseas might one day be introduced for the animation sector.
