Welcome to another episode of The Ankler Hot Seat, this one the last in a special series about the 2022 Sundance Film Festival hosted by Janice Min, Richard Rushfield and Tatiana Siegel. Please follow us at Apple Podcasts and on Twitter.
Our guest today is a true behind-the-scenes superstar of Hollywood, Josh Braun of Submarine, a Los Angeles hybrid sales, production and distribution company run by Braun and his identical twin Dan. Submarine sold American Factory from the Obamas’ Higher Ground productions and Participant Media, a documentary that premiered at Sundance in 2019 (and went on to win the Best Documentary Oscar). He also brought Boys’ State to 2019 Sundance, where it became the highest-priced documentary sale in the festival’s history, bought by Apple for $12 million. That same year, he sold Billie Eilish’s documentary, also to Apple, for $26 million, a record for a music documentary.
Currently Braun is “at” virtual Sundance with the festival’s most buzzed-about title, Nothing Compares, a documentary about Sinead O’Connor, an elusive personality he says he had pursued for years. Since premiering on Jan. 21, the movie, directed by Kathryn Ferguson, has won rave reviews, and a 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes for its poignant and powerful storytelling about O’Connor, an artist Braun says delivered a protest message that many Americans now lean into, but at the time only earned her scorn, ridicule, and eventually exile. She spoke about “reproductive rights and gay rights, and the ability for a woman to choose and many other issues,” says Braun, “and was essentially raked over the coals and penalized. I think every position she took at that earlier point…she would now be hailed almost as a hero.” Braun also reveals in his interview how, while preparing for Sundance, he and the team behind Nothing Compares responded when they learned that O’Connor’s 17-year-old son had committed suicide. “If they wanted to be pulled, we would have pulled it,” he says on the podcast, “and we respected what those nearest and dearest to her believed was the right path.”
Also on the podcast, Braun discusses what it was like working with the Obamas, attending the screening of the surprise documentary about Alexi Navalny, the Putin opposition leader, and how it feels to help independent filmmakers who typically work on shoestring budgets to suddenly, many for the first time in their lives, make the kind of money they once could only dream of: “I have to say it is the greatest feeling.”
Also on The Ankler:
In Wall St. Just Handed Netflix a Golden Opportunity to Grow Up, Entertainment Strategy Guy discussing eight ways the streaming service can emerge from a disastrous week. A few weeks before the Netflix subscriber miss, ESG also delivered four charts predicting how Netflix’s woes were right around the corner in Streaming’s Winner-Take-All Theory Collapses. Because the news isn’t all-Netfix all the time, he also recently weighed in on The Worst Case Scenario for Disney, now facing some of the same downward pressures afflicting its rival.
However, Is Bob Chapek Secretly the One Hollywood’s Been Waiting For? Richard Rushfield looks at the mobs forming against Disney’s still-getting-comfortable kingpin and asks, what if we’re getting it all wrong? A look at the business under Chapek, the Iger ghost that haunts the company, and how the low key, non-nonsense boss might in fact be what Disney needs (if not what they want).
Ankler Hot Seat Podcast: Sundance Cinderella Stories and The Time Harvey Weinstein Joined the Women’s March
PLUS! A New Optionist Newsletter is Out!
Check out Andy Lewis’ The Optionist, a weekly newsletter about the best intellectual property with filmed rights available. Sign up here! The new issue contains new rights details about the suddenly buzzy world around Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis.
To advertise with The Ankler, please contact Kymber Allen at kymber@anklermedia.com.
We now offer group subscriptions! Please email info@anklermedia.com to sign-up.
Can’t afford The Ankler right now? If you’re an assistant, student, or getting your foot in the door of this industry, and want help navigating the craziness of this business but don’t have money to spare right now, drop me a line at richard@theankler.com and we’ll work it out. No mogul or mogul-to-be left behind at The Ankler.
The Ankler is Hollywood’s favorite secret newsletter, an independent voice holding the industry’s feet to the fire. If you’re a subscriber, feel free to share this edition with a friend but just a couple, please. The Ankler depends on its paid subscribers to keep publishing.
If you’ve been passed along this issue, take the hint and get on the train. Find out why the New York Times called us the “hit Hollywood newsletter.”
Ankler Hot Seat: The Superagent Behind Sinead O'Connor, the Obamas, and Billie Eilish