James Shani made a big bet on Ali Abbasi’s popular biography of Donald Trump learner. After a stint as a talent manager at Issa Rae’s Hoorae Media, the 36-year-old producer launched his own indie production and distribution company, Rich Spirit, earlier this year, raising a round of capital for an initial three-film run. international headlines with positive social messages. But instead of diversifying his bets, Shani chose to spend most of his capital growing from a minority investor role to fully co-distributing learner along with Briarcliff Entertainment when he outright won the film after becoming embroiled in a long dispute over the final cut with its original backer, Kinematics.
In North America, learner opened below expectations in October with $1.6 million in its first weekend, but Shani says he still strongly believes his bet was the best decision for his company’s strategic future. The domestic number has since grown to around $4 million, while international territories have exceeded expectations, according to the producers, bringing the worldwide total to $14 million (and some big international territories like Japan still remain). Powerful work from the film’s main cast – Marvel star Sebastian Stan in an engaging turn as the young Donald; Legacy favorite Jeremy Strong bringing his full method actor intensity to the dark eccentricities of Trump mentor Roy Cohn; AND Borat The next movie Maria Bakalova as a lively young Ivana Trump – have made the film an Oscar winner in several categories for the 97th Academy Awards.
Before the American Film Market (and before the presidential election), THR spoke with Shani about his vision for disrupting indie distribution and what he’s learned from releasing one of the year’s hottest films.
Distribution is commonly cited as one of the most difficult aspects of business. Where do you see the opportunity to do something new?
It’s safe to say that distribution is the most difficult side of the business to innovate or make a significant impact on. But I think it’s also true that it’s the part that just hasn’t been fundamentally rethought. I’m interested in how you can organize the viewing experience to create more meaning for moviegoers while increasing ticket revenue. I think the moviegoing experience should be similar to a sports experience, where you have a date on the calendar and it’s almost like you’re going to a Lakers game, where you’re committing to the two-hour round trip driving through traffic. , but you know in advance that it’s going to be a special night. If you’re competing against Netflix, TikTok and Instagram for people’s attention, the indie cinema experience in the theater needs to become more compelling. In the US, I don’t know anyone who actually buys advance tickets this way, other than die-hard cinephiles. So how do we make the experience compelling enough for this to become a model? If going to the movies becomes more of a cultural event, like going to a concert, rather than a brief experience, we might have to rethink how many movie theaters are within a city radius—but that’s okay. If you’re offering a richer experience, maybe the price of a movie ticket should be $40 instead of $12. If it provides enough value, I believe there are many movie buffs and culture lovers who will be fine with this. People are hungry for more meaningful options to experience culture.
What did you learn from the publication? learner?
So far, the instincts of the team have been proven. Involvement in socially meaningful films is central to our approach. One of our business theses is that there should be more coordination between domestic and international territories for screening independent films. You have to strategize each market differently, of course, deriving themes and positioning materials in a way that makes sense for each country, but you can also work in harmony. The film has done very well for us internationally. It was exciting to be in London for our UK premiere and to have 4,000 people expressing this palpable excitement about leaning into a political film. The film has done particularly well there.
Why do you think this is so?
My instinct is that the British are quite close to history, but also quite far. They have some sense of what Donald’s story is, but there’s still curiosity there—and they’re taken out of it. Jeremy and Maria are also known by Legacy AND Boratgreat satirical comedies created by the British. StudioCanal has also done a really good job. Inside the country, the situation is very different.
How so?
Of course, we were hoping for a higher opening number, but it’s a tough environment right now. This film is the rare case where I question the notion that “all press is good press”, because Trump’s narratives that have dominated the headlines due to the timing of the election were detracting from the artistic excellence of the film and have alienated many people in the US. The fact is that people who have seen the film are pleasantly surprised, if not wowed, by it, and the early international success proves it – as does the excitement about its awards potential. We always knew it would be a slower burn in the US, and I hope that once we get past this tense moment in time, the film will find a wider audience. If we could do things over again, I think I would have liked to have leaned a lot more towards Roy Cohn, Jeremy Strong’s character, because that would have been a new entry point for most of the American audience. , and the movie is very much about corruption and how the system is shaped, if not broken, by figures like Roy Cohn, and how Trump is just a byproduct of that