Kathryn Everett: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: Sandbox Films (Fire of Love) and XTR (Ascension) have teamed to produce feature doc A Life Illuminated, exploring the life and legacy of pioneering marine biologist Edie Widder, in association with ocean exploration nonprofit OceanX.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia is the latest high-net-worth individual to get involved in the documentary business. As a producer on Waad Al-Kateab’s “We Dare to Dream,” about the refugee Olympic team at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Gebbia not only helped fund the project, he also played an active role in the film’s pre-production, production, and edit. “We Dare to Dream” is Al-Kateab’s second feature docu. In her first film, “For Sama,” which was nominated for an Academy Award, the Syrian director used her camera to capture her daily life during the siege of Aleppo.Gebbia produced “We Dare to Dream” alongside Violet Films’ Joanna Natasegara (“Virunga”) and Abigail Anketell-Jones (“The Edge of Democracy”) and XTR’s Bryn Mooser and Kathryn Everett. Angelina Jolie recently signed on as an executive producer on the project. Gebbia joins fellow philanthropists Laurene Powell Jobs (Concordia Studio), Jeff Skoll (Participant Media) and Jim Swartz (Impact Partners) in the docu investment business.

Naman Ramachandran New York-based film and TV studio and streaming network FilmRise has acquired North American distribution rights to true-crime documentary feature film “The Thief Collector.” Directed by Emmy winner Allison Otto (“The Love Bugs”), the film follows one of the most audacious and puzzling art thefts of a generation. In 1985, Willem de Kooning’s seminal work, “Woman-Ochre,” was sliced from its frame and stolen off the walls of the University of Arizona Museum of Art, disappearing into the desert. Over 30 years later, in a remote town in New Mexico, the $160 million dollar painting was rediscovered in the unlikeliest of places – the home of an eccentric married couple, both schoolteachers, with a keen eye for great works but a very unconventional method of collecting them. The film features Glenn Howerton co-creator, director, writer and star of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

AMC Networks is throwing everything it’s got at Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches.

EXCLUSIVE: XTR, the non-fiction studio behind Apple’s They Call Me Magic and Oscar-nominated feature doc Ascension, has hired Shane Riley as Head of Sales and Distribution Strategy. 

EXCLUSIVE: Documentary+, the free streaming service launched by non-fiction studio XTR, has launched its latest slate of original feature docs.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaDocumentary studio XTR and Crooked Highways are teaming up on “Merch!”The upcoming documentary will look at the origin and impact of music merchandise through the stories of pivotal musicians, designers, fans, and entrepreneurs who helped commodify artists. The non-fiction feature will trace the history of these products, starting with the first Elvis Presley concert t-shirt.

XTR has launched production on Role Players, which is billed as the definitive documentary on the seminal fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons.

Miss Cleo, the popular television psychic whose commercials became iconic during the 1990s, is set to be the focus of an upcoming documentary.The documentary, produced by the nonfiction entertainment studio XTR and production company Majority, will explore the life and career of the alleged Jamaican shaman who rose to national prominence with the phrase “Call me now!” According to Deadline, Miss Cleo’s Psychic Reader’s Network raked in over $1 billion until the Federal Trade Commission brought charges against her in 2002, ultimately ending her career.Award-winning filmmaker Senain Khesghi, best known for her work on films such as Project Kashmir and The Diplomat, will direct the documentary about the late Miss Cleo (born Youree Dell Harris), who died in 2016 at the age of 53 after a bout with cancer.“Youree Harris may have been an accomplice or perhaps a victim in the Psychic Reader’s Network fraud, but she also had talent and personality, which for women doesn’t always translate into access or wealth,” Kheshgi said in a statement. “Her story is an example of how brown and Black women have historically been marginalized and exotified in society and popular culture.

Wyatte Grantham-Philips editor“Free Chol Soo Lee” has been acquired by global distributor, streamer and production company MUBI.The documentary, which premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival, will come to U.S. theaters in 2022, with release plans in other territories (Latin America, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey, the U.K.

EXCLUSIVE: There’s a boom in collectible sports trading cards – from the $4.6M paid for a Luka Doncic rookie card or the $5.2M for a 1952 Mickey Mantle card as well as a recent deal that valued card brand Topps at $1.3B

Marvel star Mark Ruffalo is to exec produce a feature-length documentary about Lakota Indians’ quest to reclaim the Black Hills, sacred land that was stolen in violation of treaty agreements.