Indie Producer Playbook, With Nina Jacobson & Brad Simpson

I wrote about the private equity reckoning after Hello Sunshine’s fall, a surprising shortage of indie films and eight VC players and 14 PE firms ready to pounce on Hollywood.

Bigger isn’t always better. As mega-studios consolidate — into ever-larger behemoths that are increasingly risk-averse in fear of disappointing Wall Street — a company with fewer than 10 employees is creating a refreshingly counterintuitive model for how to succeed in Hollywood.

Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson, the veteran producing duo leading Color Force, are behind The Hunger Games, Crazy Rich Asians, The People v. O. J. Simpson and Love Story. The nearly 20-year-old boutique has landed some of the most coveted IP in Hollywood, maintained a relationship with FX for nearly 15 years and built a business that has thrived despite multiple industry upheavals — all while challenging the notions that every script needs a package and every hit movie needs a fast-tracked sequel.

“The role of a producer is to continually force this system that wants to stagnate to accept new ideas and new talent,” says Simpson, recalling how early in his producing career a “very important agent” at CAA told him he’d “missed the good years” in Hollywood. He and Jacobson emphatically disagree — and not just because The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is poised to add a healthy chunk of change to the already $3-billion-plus franchise when it opens Nov. 20.

Their playbook is unconventional, but it’s clearly working. So I talked with Jacobson and Simpson about the four rules they live and work by, and what current and aspiring indie producers can learn from their approach — which includes some surprisingly counterintuitive lessons: