Anonymous Content, whose recent projects include Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan’s “Enemy” for Amazon Studios, is seeking to expand its international presence with plans for new ventures in Poland, Germany and Australia, executives said Wednesday.
Speaking at a panel held at the MIA Market in Rome, Anonymous Content’s international president David Davoli and chief creative officer David Levine made clear their group’s commitment to global joint ventures, promising upcoming additions to a portfolio that boasts partnerships with companies in the UK and France. , Scandinavia, Spain and Brazil.
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“We are completely open to (all forms of) partnerships,” Davoli explained. “We are willing to be partners of the minority (or) partners of the majority; The devil is in the details. And there’s nothing complicated about it (because) we let the lawyers sort out the details.”
Existing partnerships include Anonymous Federation, a joint venture with France’s Federation Studios led by Rosalie Cimino; Anonymous Content Nordic, launched in collaboration with The Imitation Game director Morten Tyldum; and a recently signed agreement with Spanish box office champion Moreno Films. Eventually, Davoli hopes these separate businesses will be able to develop projects with each other.
Davoli has been clear about his group’s interest in foreign-language food, saying that projects in Norwegian and Portuguese are already in production and noting that his company is developing several series in Italian and is also looking for a joint venture partner in Italy.
However, neither executive mentioned a round of layoffs last week that saw talent management and operations cut about 8% of its workforce, spreading across all divisions. They also gave no details about the company’s next chief executive officer, who has yet to be named.
However, Davoli made some startling comments about future plans for the exhibition space. Praising films like “Taylor Swift: A Tour of the Ages” and “Renaissance: A Beyoncé Film” for their willingness to forgo traditional distribution networks and make deals directly with exhibitors, Davoli noted that his company may also explore similar avenues.
Indeed, both executives were bullish on theatrical innovation, with Levine hinting with great interest at Netflix’s acquisition of exhibition spaces in New York and Los Angeles. “I don’t know how much Anonymous can contribute to this in the long term,” Levin said. “But, of course, it would be great if we could have a theater for our work.”
“There are two different theaters,” Levine continued. “One of them is a theater of your own channel, where you could watch all our work in one place, which has always been a dream. And the other is a kind of collective theater; and I think we will always try to achieve the theater of the collective. We just have to find out… if we can ever contribute to their discovery.”
Levine also pointed to True Detective, which combines hyper-regional specificity with moral and metaphysical themes, as something of a star of praise when considering international work. “What makes something accessible is usually… the most intimate specific programming and the most universal programming,” he explained.
“True Detective was a morality play,” Levine continued. “So it’s endlessly relevant no matter where you do it. It just so happened that it was these two cops. They invited the audience to ask them the right questions about what they had done in the past and whether they were going to do the right thing in the present. And that’s what makes something accessible.”
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