Didi producers want to change Hollywood through positive disruption

The award-winning comedy-drama Have I gotThe arrival of 's in theaters marks the official arrival in Hollywood of the “new” film and television financing and development company Unapologetic Projects. While their mission statement is reminiscent of speeches the industry has heard before, they are already putting their words into action to fix a broken and, frankly, often exploitative system.

“The model we’re trying to create is one of positive disruption and being accountable in everything we do. We ask ourselves if there’s a better way, if it’s fair to the people we work with. We have to be willing to question things when they’re not,” says Tyler Boehm, co-CEO. “It’s not about judging other people, but trying to be a good role model and not just doing things because it’s the right thing to do. We see it as an opportunity. This city has a lot of people who are saying things.”

“It can be confusing because you wonder what you’re disrupting. There’s so much,” adds co-CEO Chris Quintos Cathcart, a former actress who credits the duo’s “marriage of insider and outsider energy” as a key differentiator that gives them a unique perspective. Their mandate, which focuses on underrepresented creatives, puts them on a good footing. They started with the idea of ​​paying people fairly for their work.

“For example, we want to pay our writers to pitch us their TV projects. I came to that conclusion because I was a writer on the other side. I pitched projects and I know it’s a lot of work. If I could just go in and do whatever I wanted, why wouldn’t we pay people for their work?” she mused. “The system is so broken that at first, the writers we work with are kind of like, ‘Well, what’s the catch? Are you trying to screw me over in some way? I don’t know how, but there’s something going on here. Are you going to own my idea in perpetuity? What’s going on?’ There’s a lot of energy in that situation and I’m like, ‘No, we’re literally trying to pay for this piece of work.’”

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The couple didn't know each other, but were introduced by a mutual friend they trusted. It later turned out that they had both attended that person's wedding, so they had probably talked but hadn't made the professional connection. Timing is (almost) everything for the duo, and Have I gotwhich will be released exclusively in theaters on Friday, July 26, 2024, is also a good example.

“It was one of the first projects we saw,” Cathcart, EP on A24 The inspectionTyler recalls. “This script deals with childhood in a way that I've never seen before. I found it very relatable as an Asian growing up in the Bay Area, but I also didn't have hundreds of scripts under my belt like Tyler did. I thought, 'If he says it's special, I'll follow him.' There's a lot of trust in that, but it was obviously something very special and it proved our point.”

Boehm, former vice president of Sobini Films, added: “Audiences are hungry for more representation, audiences are hungry for new narratives, and the pipeline, especially in the independent space, hasn’t caught up to that yet. They’re still stuck in old models because that’s the way it’s been done. They’re still stuck in the foreign pre-sales model, even though that doesn’t work for 99% of films. We’re coming in and imagining how we can disrupt the independent financial space in a positive way. It’s about valuing things that have been devalued before.”

Didi draws inspiration from real life and prioritizes authenticity over traditional star power

Unapologetic Projects “was founded on the belief that all audiences should see themselves represented on screen and is changing the traditional funding model by valuing diversity and cultural authenticity over star power and name recognition.” Have I got Efforts with potential partners have proven that they were right in thinking that disruption is necessary.

“We were wondering who we could hire to play the mother, and Joan Chen’s name came up,” Cathcart says. “I said, ‘Well, you don’t have to tell me who she is. She’s a legend.’ This was early on, when we were supposed to find the biggest name we could in the area, and I couldn’t think of a bigger name. When it came time to sell the film, they said, ‘Well, you don’t have any names,’ and we said, ‘But we do, they’re not big names to you.’ Again, it proved our point. In the community where I come from, she’s iconic, but not everyone at the clearance table is.”

Have I gotproduced by Boehm and Cathcart, was a critical and audience success at the Sundance Film Festival. The response to writer-director Sean Wang's 2008 comedy-drama, about a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American boy learning to skate, flirt and love his mother, confirmed to them that they were on the right track. The film opens in theaters the same weekend as Deadpool and Wolverine but it couldn't be more different.

“I knew I had never seen a movie like this. Have I got“People in my community are going to events that are mediocre at best. I know what it’s like to want representation on this scale and at this level of quality, but it’s one thing to have theories, and it’s another to see it all unfold in real time,” she mused.

He continued: “It was so satisfying to be on the street in Park City, wearing our Have I got “We made beanies and we had people come up and tell us how much the movie meant to them. A lot of them were Asian-American, and I’ve never had that kind of reaction to any of my films, even though people enjoyed them. It struck a chord with the audience. The reaction and the feedback was so instantaneous that it was incredibly gratifying.”

“As a white, straight person, you’re in a perpetual state of not knowing what you don’t know and you’re trying to become more and more aware all the time,” Boehm continued. “You’ve seen so many representations of yourself, your culture, your values, that have been the norm in what you’ve seen in the media your whole life, so to approach this work, you have to start from a place of, ‘I don’t know, and I’m going to listen to the people around me who do.’ I don’t know if I’m doing that, but that’s where I’m trying to start.”

Unapologetic Projects is a Cinderella story in the industrial sector, but different

While most things at Unapologetic Projects are decided by the duo together, the company name was a different case.

“Tyler gave me full naming rights, which was nice,” financier Cathcart revealed. “For me, Unapologetic is aspirational. I think it goes against the value of a career that involves having to present myself for a small role. Of all the words you could use to describe me, ‘small’ is probably the last one you would say. It felt right. I’m trying to take up more space as a woman of color. As someone who has succeeded in what I consider a white world, I’ve done a lot of apologizing or trying to get what people want from me, but I know now that you just have to rely on your own experience and intuition.”

Even if Have I got Although this is their first feature film, Cathcart and Boehm have already learned valuable lessons about the financial environment in which they currently operate.

“I knew from my own experience in portfolio investing that I didn’t want to be the only person on a project,” she explained. “I wasn’t going to finance a whole movie; that’s not a good investment. It’s not smart, so that’s where I came from. We used to say we were comfortable in the $3 million to $7 million range, but after we sold Have I gotI would say the more three, the better. A lot of these people are going to be first-time filmmakers, so I don't know if your first feature should be largely outside of that as an inexperienced filmmaker. That wouldn't necessarily be wise.”

“When it comes to investing, we do a very different job of evaluating projects,” Boehm added. “As investors, we don’t look at it as a zero-sum game. We’re not looking for special privileges or an advantageous position over our fellow investors. We try to be good partners to the filmmakers we work with so that the success of the film and every film we invest in is based on the belief that the film has upside and not on the fear of downside. We also try to be responsible in making sure the film is successful and keep in mind what the market can bear at the moment. As we all know, the acquisition market is tough.”

The Unapologetic team, which is already expanding and has multiple film and television projects in the pipeline, now has clear and critical goals for the next phase of disruption. One of them is to prepare others to succeed far beyond their business.

“We want to grow, we want to make three or four movies a year, and we started a TV department in January, so we’re going to be putting out some shows,” Boehm said. “We want to build relationships with the writers, directors and producers that we work with and help them grow their careers. The measure of our success is not just our financial success, but whether the people we’ve worked with have longer careers or whether the people who are in our movies who may have been told they had no value in the traditional financial model are now stars in their own right. That’s how we’ll judge the impact we’ve had on the industry.”

Cathcart concluded: “It’s about sharing access in a lot of ways. I always say I have this crazy Cinderella story as a backdrop. I’ve been at the ball for ten years, and I’m not really interested in the people who are there, so I want to attract cool people to the ball. I have to go to the ball; now I have to get to the back door, kick it open, get everybody in, get geared up and let them in.”