Anonymous Content, whose recent productions include Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan’s film “Foe” for Amazon Studios, is looking to expand its international footprint, with new ventures planned in Poland, Germany and Australia, top execs announced on Wednesday.
Speaking at a panel held at the MIA Market in Rome, Anonymous Content international president David Davoli and chief creative officer David Levine made clear their group’s vigor for global joint ventures, promising upcoming additions to a portfolio that boasts partnerships with companies in the U.K., France, Scandinavia, Spain and Brazil.
“We’re totally open to [all forms of] partnerships,” Davoli explained. “We’re willing to be minority partners [or] majority partner; the devil’s in the details. And that’s not complicated in a way, [because] we let the lawyers figure out the details.”
Existing partnerships include Anonymous Federation, a joint venture with France’s Federation Studios led by Rosalie Cimino; Anonymous Content Nordic, which was launched in collaboration with “The Imitation Game” director Morten Tyldum; and freshly inked accord with Spanish box-office champ Moreno Films. Evenually, Davoli hopes these discrete ventures can develop projects with one another.
Davoli was unequivocal about his group’s interest in foreign-language fare, announcing that production was already underway for projects in Norwegian and Portuguese, and noting that his company was developing several Italian language series while scouting for a joint venture partner in Italy as well.
Neither exec mentioned last week’s round of layoffs, however, which saw the talent management and production outfit cut about 8% of its staff, spread across all divisions. Nor did they offer any clues about the company’s next chief executive officer, still to be named.
Still, Davoli did make eyebrow-raising comments about future plans in the exhibition space. Praising titles like “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” and “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” for their willingness to forgo traditional distribution networks in order to cut deals directly with exhibitors, Davoli indicated that his company might also explore similar paths.
Indeed, both execs were bullish on theatrical innovation, with Levine alluding to Netflix’s acquisition of exhibition venues in New York and Los Angeles with great interest. “I don’t know, in the long term, what Anonymous could contribute to it,” said Levine. “But certainly it would be amazing if we ended up with a theater for our work.”
“There are two different theaters,” Levine continued. “One is the theater of your own channel – where you could observe all of our work in one place – which has always been a dream. And the other is sort of the theater of the collective; and I think we’ll always try to achieve the theater of the collective. We just have to figure out… if we’re ever able to contribute to opening them.”
Levine also pointed toward “True Detective” – which married hyper regional specificity with moral and metaphysical themes – as a kind of lodestar when considering international work. “What makes something accessible tends to be… the most intimate specific programing and the most abundantly universal programing,” he explained.
“’True Detective’ was a morality play,” Levine continued. “So that’s infinitely relatable, no matter where you make it. It just happened to be these two cops. They were challenging the audience to ask them the right questions about what they’d done in the past and whether or not they were going to do the right thing in the present. And that’s what makes something accessible.”
