Movie producer John Pinnatti is best known for his work on the smash hit Crazy Rich Asian, But what you may not know is his producing work in Asia and other territories around the world. Now he's here to talk about his innovative strategy that's about as unlikely a breakthrough as Crazy Rich Asians itself. Thanks for coming in, John, Hello, and I'm really glad to be here, glad to have you.
You are no stranger to the movie business. Your name has been attached to a lot of great indie films from in the Bedrooms a Prairie Home Companion, But then your career took a big turn. So walk us through the before and after, and eventually we'll get too. Crazy Rich Asians terrific. I began actually as a assistant director
for Sidney Lamett in the late nineties. Um he was benevolent enough to take me on as a a wayward medical student who decided that wasn't going to really work out for me, and he allowed me to train alongside he in a very tight knit group of filmmakers, crew, etcetera. Who basically made a career just working on Sydney Lamett movies. And I was fortunate enough to join that family and trained in physical production and under his UH close tutelage.
When I started working with Sydney, I just loved the process. I loved how he thought about making movies. I loved how he prepared. And that led to creating a company in New York City that focused on the um breaking down, budgeting, scheduling, and helping to make sense out of what was on the page and executing on screen. That company h was called Concrete Productions. Soon after, I started a company called Green Street Films in the mid nineties. We worked outside
the studio system. All of the financing for our films came from independent equity participants. We we worked a lot with Wall Street investors, and we just maybe out of necessity and lack of experience, we didn't really look toward the studio system for our financing, and that was kind of a wonderful way to control what we wanted to make.
And starting with Lisa piccard Is Famous and The Chateau and several other movies UH in the late nineties, and then including In the Bedroom, which was in two thousand and one, I believe we just were kind of eclectic. If something interests us, then we could figure out if financing plan we made it. And the independent film at that time at Circle was it a good business to be in. It was a terrific business to be in because at the time there were buyers and there were
several buyers. Uh, Mirror Max was leading the pack for sure, but along with Merri Max you had Fine Line and Warners, Independent and um Think Films and other terrific outlets who were looking for independent films and finding a strategy to release those films. And for several years, including some of our crossover stuff like Uptown Girls and Swim Fan. I mean really, we would just make whatever interest us we and we'd figure out, almost as an afterthought, how we
would distribute it. And for the most part we got very lucky with that. That sounds so different than what the film businesses today. You hit it on the head, Andrew, that is that was a uh not just a different time, but it was a different way to think about equity risk in films. Uh. For us, we always felt there was a way to work it out. So if you were fortunate enough to attract multiple buyers, you had an auction and still exists now for sure. But you're able
to sell it. If for some reason the film fell short of attracting a theatrical there were still ways, uh to um mitigate your risk, whether it was international sales, whether it was a non theatrical release. Here and remember at this point, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, all the streamers were not part of our consciousness or anyone's consciousness. Uh, but the DVD business is still robust, and people looked at ancillary as UH, if we had enough elements, maybe there was a way to work our way out of um
A a less than optimal theatrical film. UM And that was great and helped balance our business to probably the mid two thousands, when it doesn't seem like too long ago, but I guess it was. These terrific independent distribution entities were disappearing, like before our eyes. Warners went out at Warners Independent went out of business, Think went out of business. Uh. Merrimax was in a transition between UM that label and the Weinstein Company. UM Fine Line I believe no longer
existed right at that time. And I'm sure I'm missing others, but we just got caught. We got caught with several several millions of dollars. Of investment in a slate of films and uh really no one to sell them to. You know, I'm exaggerating, but it was pretty close to that. Um So if you missed the mark on some of these, the the downside could have been catastrophic. Um So that was a tough time, and we kind of had to look inside ourselves and say, Okay, how do we work
our way out of this? UH quired cutting back um on the size of the company, the uh incremental investments we were going to take after that, and we really just focused on the films we had in production and how to work our way out of them. Um But could it domestically facing business as you were running back then continue to survive more or was it about finding a completely different model? Uh? It wasn't going to survive
for us. Maybe there were other companies who had a different strategies, but for us we were so um um dependent on our upside coming from a domestic sale that for us the model fell apart. And for me that was a um an aha moment where I said, Wow, I never want to be in a position again where external forces could so radically upset the course of our business. UM So I did, but I maybe anybody else would do.
I looked to greener pastures, and to me, Asia represented that. Um, I should say, I don't think the average producer wouldn't necessarily look to Asia because that is a completely different
world as the film business go. UM. Maybe I guess from my point of view, living in New York City, UM, having my closest of friends not in the film business but in finance and law and international commerce, it kind of seemed logical at that point, not necessarily from the place of well, what's happening in the film business there, but place of what's happening in trade there, what's happening
in commerce and um. And also I had to always had an inclination towards you know, great Asian films that I would never thought I'd be making, but I would enjoy and quite frankly, what do I have to lose? You know? At that point I didn't believe in the model anymore. The money was still there. Quite frankly, we had done well enough that there were still investors, but I couldn't take investors money for a model I no longer believed in. So what did you see exactly in
Asia that spoke to you as opportunity. So um I landed in Beijing on kind of a fact finding mission that included in that first ship a visit to Hong Kong and a visit to Seoul. And the first thing I saw, or the first thing I was introduced to, was some two thousand and ten two thousand eleven was the idea that the government was going to support a
growing film industry, and it was yet to materialize. Meeting there was obviously a handful of incredible Chinese directors, but it had not yet taken a turn into no, no, no, no, we're going to make this work. And what I saw funny. The first set of meetings I had were not really creative. They were about construction and how many theaters were being built. And so as a Westerner in from the movie business entering into these meetings, the questions were in about hey,
do you have material, do you know directors? How do you make movies? It was about anyone you can introduce us to who could help advise on the building at theaters. And if you recall around this time, and I don't know the exact date, but AMC had been purchased and there was a lot of attention given to UM, how do we use the expertise of Western exhibition companies to help build here. Maybe I wasn't involved at that level, but the next level down, every real estate developer wants
to understand how they could build theaters. And that kind of clicked in my head and said, well, something's going on here. Someone clearly is getting a signal from the Chinese government, from Chinese financiers that we need to invest in infrastructure. So that that actually started the path. It wasn't aha moment of there's five great directors I want to work with in China. It was about this is coming and we're not going to stop it, and it's
going to be something. UM. We're going We from the West, both from a finance and production point of view, are going to have to take notice of. I know it's an often quoted UM statistic and I haven't checked recently, but for many years, two screens per day we're coming online in China, UM, and that includes Saturday and Sundays, as I always like to say, UM. And I'm not even sure what the penetration is now, but absolutely there's more to go UM where you know I would arrive
in a second tier city. So travel from Beijing to um Chin Dao and um and someone would say, yes, Toruistic city, they have ten million people in it. That's a second tire city. And there's eight theaters. And there's just mind boggling to me. And not that that existed, but that the amount of growth possible was still ahead of us UM. So these theaters needed content. What was
your first moves? So the first thing we did was um A. The gentleman I met there an American who had been living in Asia for thirty years, a gentleman named Robert Friedland who's been in disparate businesses UH mining and resources. He was the original investor in serious satellite
radio believe it or not. UM He had some inkling toward uh UM entertainment, but more he had the connections within China and he introduced me to um several companies, one called Poli which was a formerly a state owned company that UMU had holdings in auction houses, had a film technology and also distribution. At one point they had been um UH Polly Bona was an entity that was a um UM connection between Pauli the company I mentioned in Bona, which um eventually spun off to be a
terrific distributor today in China. UM, but at this point they had spun off. We made a deal with Poulli to cooperate to develop projects together and that was the first step into formalizing relationships in China. UM and that would ended up while we did. While no films came out of it, a lot of understanding of the structure and particularly in China became more clear to us. Who were the people making the decisions, how was the government
truly supporting the ascension of the Chinese film market? Just key and something we would have never been able to uh take advantage of without this particular investor and now
my partner Robert Friedland helping UM. That was the first uh we realized quickly, or I realized quickly that in order to get to some momentum here, because we remember, we didn't have a slate of films, we didn't have a pipeline of films that would work in Asia, whether it be in English that are we're telling Asian stories
or local language Mandarin films. So UM we decided to do a deal with Fox International Productions, which at the time was a terrific organization within Fox that Uh, we're really early adopters of this idea of producing local content for the indigenous markets, and we made a deal with them. They we agreed to comb finance films in China, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. For us, it was a transformative deal.
So all of a sudden, with as that deal came online, we had access now to Foxes terrific production slate in their development pipeline. We looked into countries that would interest us, trying to for sure worked. Korea is a country that we started with Fox there. I'm sorry. We we started our work in Korea via our deal with Fox. UM ended up having some terrific successes there with director Naha Jin's film of the whaling or locally known as Guck Sung Um and that helped us as a company establish
our own relationships on the ground. We UM duplicated that effort in India. UM in China for sure again under the auspices of our co financing co production deal with Fox International Productions UM. So when Fox when f I p UM took a detour and started to UM for whatever the internal inclinations in Fox happened, we were there to continue the efforts. And by this point we had our own relationships. We could go directly to the distributors. Um,
we could go directly to the filmmakers. And that moment, uh is when really my eyes opened. I said, wait a second, we could do this on our own. We could be a mini international local language studio as long as we were willing to get on flights and deal with translations and all of that extra step you need. Um. And it's just been a wonderful business and intellectual and social experience. But it's no small feat because companies bigger than yours have sort of knocked on international door. Zen
felt discouraged. They've tried and failed. What were you doing that was succeeding? You couldn't use the word precedent, so if you thought in precedent, you were dead. So when when we will go into a market. Even now we're shooting in Mexico, we're in we're making a movie in
Indonesia as we speak. Many country total are un so we're in seven Um, not shooting at any one time, but there's a seven countries that at least now we have resources and material that we own that's going to grow in two thousand nineteen, we're going to expand in Latin America, which we see is fertile for us UM. But this is the idea that you can't walk into a new market, especially ones who you for sure have their own filmmaking apparatus. What do we offer? And one
things we offer a flexibility. So not only do we finance, and not only do we bring our Western system of development and production and post production, but we have to bring flexibility and dailmaking. And the companies you're referencing or your you may be alluding to are usually older companies who are built on precedent um who may not value the small winds that we look very positively on because we're doing this for the long run. Just can't move
quickly enough. There's the legal contractual challenges, there's the talent relationship challenges. Um. We just and I know it sounds um um um self serving, but we really go into every negotiation like you want to do it differently. Here great, we know we know the bottom line of what we need to be covered, but we don't really get held up by any institutional drag on our side to stop the problem the reduction train. So here you are, you know,
making significant headway and all sorts of countries. And yet eighteen came around and it turned out instead of uh, these you know, local films in the local language that you were specializing in, Crazy Rich Asians, a movie for the American market primarily blows up and explodes. How did you get there, especially considering that really wasn't the focus,
not at all. Although early in two thousand fourteen or the end of two thousand thirteen, as we were formalizing I don't know Pictures, which eventually has been morphed into sk Global, we could talk about that, uh and a
bit um. We didn't have any content. So we found ourselves as a fully financed company working out of New York at that time, building the relationships I mentioned through our Foxdale and just leg work, and we hadn't yet really understood or we hadn't yet gotten to the place where we could make decisions for a local market that requires being there, requires quite frankly, we may never truly understand what a Thaie audience would want. Um, So we
need our Thai partners to help us with that. When Crazy which Asian's came along, there was a comfort zone and for us, and I guess I guess we didn't realize that at the time. But for us, we had already been a tuned and I personally had been a tuned to um being in Asia, being in Singapore at that point, I was spending six months a year there, uh in and around Greater Asia. UM. So when when I found this book, it just seemed familiar to me, and it was just the opposite of what one would say.
It was like, Ah, that's that's something that happens in Asia. To me, it just it eelt like more of the decisions I was making at Greenstreet Films, where wow, this is a personal story, this is a personal journey, but look there's a context for it on a more broad scope, and for us, it fits in this general mandate we were that we were looking towards Asia. It was as
simple as that. And I think the second thing is there wasn't financial competition for it at that point, so it it didn't fit in as a studio film, just as at in the Galley form, or as as Kevin Qualms, the author of Pravor Crazy Rich Asians book now has become. At that point, it was just a good story that happened to be focused in Asia. UM, So I don't
know that we really thought that hard about it. We just said, well, we need stuff that works toward Asian By the way, this is a film probably needs we could offer something because it still needs a Western point of view to build it. We were super, super lucky to read it get excited about it. Just as Kevin Kwan was meeting Hollywood producers, Um, he had agreed to work with Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson from Color Force and who Um, really this is their sweet spot, taking adaptation,
taking books and leading them through their adaptation. They did it well on Hunger Games and Diary of a Wimpy Kid and now many other projects. So for me, we just got lucky. You know. I expressed interest in financing the film, um the Kevin's agent at the time. So that's great. We have two uber producers here who want to get guide the development. And it kind of was one of the simplest tales I've ever made, because nobody was even looking at it, at least from the world
I live in. We're we're not a Hollywood company. We're in at this point, we're operating on and West Broadway and Soho in New York City. So for us, we just saw some material clearly great producers who are already attached, and we and it fell under this kind of broad construct of well, I haven't Hope Pictures is doing is looking to do work in Asia. They'll be fine with it.
And it was nothing more magical than that. Well, you mentioned Ivan Hope Pictures sk Global, I think you need to sort of walk through the holy trinity of John Panatti's film brands. It's it's complicated. It's complicated. That's exactly what it is. Um So, I mentioned Green Street Films. That's a film company that I ran out of New York City with Fisher Stevens for several years. We started in and in fact our backer at the time was
a gentleman named Sidney Kimmel. Um We in the early two thousand's, Fisher and I continued running Green Street, but at this point a new financier had come in Sydney was moving his operation to l A. He was leaving his day job as the chairman of UH Jones New York and Jones Apparel, a big fashioned brand that he built. Um So, he went on to start Sydney Kimmel Entertainment in l A. We stuck in New York building Green
Street Films up cut to two thousand and thirteen. UM I made a deal with Robert Friedland sold the Green Street Films asset. At this point we had about thirty films in the library. UM we sold Robert the Robert Friedlin, who again is lived in Asia. We sold in the company under the condition that together we started a company called Ivanhope Pictures that was decidedly Asia facing for all the reasons we talked about. Robert was intent on us looking east and I agree to that. So that actually
started Ivan Picked years so I have no pictures. Ran for three or four years. I eventually moved to Los Angeles. UM I hooked back up with my dear friend Sidney Kimmel. He asked me to come on and oversee Sydney Kimmel Entertainment, which I did. For a period of time. I was running both companies UH and kind of made sense because there were two different time zones and as long as I was willing to work around the clock, it worked. Eventually, Robert and Sydney got to know each other. I suggest
that we should merge the company's we did. Uh. The resulting company of ivan Hope Pictures in Sydney Kimmel Entertainment is a company called sk Global that is the parent company. Uh, we remain. We we kept the Ivanhoe Pictures label in
the Sydney Kimmel Entertainment label alive. And depending on what content we're shooting, if it's a local language picture in Indonesia, more likely that's going to be under the ivan Oe Pictures And if it's something like Greta, the Neil Jordan's film that's coming out this year, or Hell or high Water or other more traditional Sydney Kumulo and entertainment films, they fall under that banner. Well, so on the Sydney Kimmel side, would that be Greta is one production that's
coming out soon. You also have a show coming to Netflix, Deli Crime, that that would come from Ivanhoe Ivanhoe and it's going to be on Netflix India but also available to all Netflix worldwide. Yeah. So that to direct um outgrowth of our comfort zone and working in local language, Richie Meta wrote and directed eight episodes of a true crime story called Deli Crime. We partnered with Golden Caravan who is a Moon Bay, an l A based production
finance company run by a great group of executives. We uh we all agree to just jump in and finance and produce those eight episodes. We were fortunate enough to bring him to Sundance a few weeks ago where we made a deal with Netflix. Netflix Now we'll put all eight completed episodes on the service on March of this year, and they've also agreed to a second season that will be released in two thousand twenty. So it's sort of
an interesting new phase for you. And first of all, you're branching out into television and not just film, but also you're dealing now with a different group of buyers and Netflix and the others. What is that like for you?
It's a great outgrowth of why I believe I Haven't Know Pictures was wealth positioned to start in two thousand thirteen because at this point now there was a model uh coming becoming clear again at least on the Ivan Olk pictures side, where if we could find good local content, maybe now there was a global opportunity. So when we go into any of the countries we work in, we are absolutely understanding the local market, know that the vast, vast majority of our revenues will be made in that
um um that particular country. However, we're just internationalized and how we see the world and how we see content.
So one of our opportunities and advantages in the local market is convincing directors that we are actually looking outwards for their their content, will take it to can as we did with the Whaling, or will help have it distributed in Western Europe, which we have on several of our local language films that happened to dovetail perfectly with these streamers appetite to own worldwide rights and take that um um what would once seem like a a very
indigenous title in Thailand and now find an audience elsewhere. Uh. Thankfully it fits how we think about content, how we the local to global aspect of content making drives us as filmmakers, and now we have an access point for that.
So in some ways, the Deli Crime the television show, really has its roots in um our hope that interesting stories told as locally as possible could have a global um um context, and Deli Crime clearly demonstrates that, and I think that's kind of drives us and if and right there. That's a business model where we could say, you know what, if we could continue to grow revenues outside of the local market and thoughtfully develop the right
content that could make that move. We feel good about that, and I think you're going to see more and more um um examples of that, for sure from us, but I also think from other investors and filmmakers who who who see the world um outside of just the nationalistic boundaries. Maybe a lesson for even beyond the film industry, I'm sure. But one last question one that kind of brings it full circle to something you said earlier about having the
kind of business that's not dependent on external forces. But in this land of Netflix, Amazon and other big giants that are presumably bigger than anything you've dealt with in your career, are you not still somewhat dependent on external forces? Um? So we try to in the local markets. We try to um measure our risks very very rarely, and there are exceptions like Deli Crime, but very rarely will we do a local film without a local distribution partner to
start with. So because you do, we we can't possibly understand all the machinations of an audiences um appetite in each of these countries. We very much rely on our local partner and our local distribution partner to help us with that. Um as what you said is very important. You will never just is just not the business. If you want full coverage and you're not willing to take risk,
you should not be in this business. It's just not it's not a tune to that we're we are um um constitutionally um um okay, with a certain amount of risk. So and we just hope we stay slightly ahead of the market and slightly ahead of buyers to know we could deliver something to them what it will look like three years from now. You're absolutely right, and maybe a
wholly different context. You know, we may be um making content for streaming or platforms that we don't even we can't even understand yet that have some kind of toelco
um opportunity. Yeah, just it's just unclear. But really, what's I think has been fun and has helped us is we try to say a little bit ahead of this by being on the ground because we think the growth is in these international markets for us that at least it is and as long as we're there, you know, we're now doing a lot of work in Vietnam, so but it's two years in the making. We haven't even
come close to our first film. But that's okay. It took us three years to agree to do something in Indonesia and now our first film is starting March five. So we're patient in that regard, and I think we have to be because while the world moves very fast, it still takes time to get to the place where
you're comfortable. You're comfortable with the risk profile. I wonder whether you are due for something that could be like the reverse of a crazy rich Asians, where instead of taking say, what might be viewed as a primarily Asian story and selling it to an American audience, you take a say, with Daily Crime, a native Indian story that actually sort of plays well and the rest of the world. And I think there's that increased appetite material. I one
think that's happening. I think you have you know, often referenced um UM examples like Narcos, which Netflix did a wonderful job of internationalizing UM. So it's happening already. I think you're God willing, We're going to do it enough so that uh, one of our productions it just hits that sweet spot with with getting audiences minds open to an experience that they wouldn't normally never get, and I'd
like to do that quite funking. On the theatrical side, you know, I love streaming, It's a big part of our business, but at the core, I still love going to a theater. So I'm hoping we could find a context for a film that does does do exactly what you're saying, does catch people who catch Western audiences imagination for a story that um might have originate in Asia, for instance. That's a dream, John. I wish you luck in your pursuit of that success. We'll be watching. Thank you, Andrew,
I really appreciate it. This has been another episode of Strictly Business. Tune in next week for another helping of scintillating conversation with media movers and shakers, and please make sure you subscribe to the podcast to hear future episodes. Also leave a review in Apple podcast let us know how we're doing.