'Favourite' Producer Ken Kao’s Hit Indie Model: No More Films 'Seven People See'
The Waypoint CEO, partners with Neon, on the sweet spot of budgets today, how he picks what to finance, horror's future, and when to bring a studio on board
I write about agents, lawyers and top dealmakers for paid subscribers. I recently wrote my Q1 deals report on overalls and first-looks and the state of selling an original film. Earlier, I interviewed CEO Tom Quinn on how he built Neon. Reach me at ashley@theankler.com.
You could call Ken Kao a producer. When people ask him what he does, that is, after all, usually the first thing he says. But it’s only a small part of the picture.
His eclectic slate includes everything from prestige films — Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite, Scott Cooper’s Hostiles and Martin Scorsese’s Silence — to action comedy The Nice Guys and last year’s horror smash Longlegs.
While Kao may be best known as cofounder and CEO of Waypoint Entertainment, he’s “dabbled in every space other than theatrical distribution” including development, financing and even startup incubation.
Not that Kao is hurting for distribution. Last year Waypoint made a major splash with a strategic partnership with the town’s hottest indie distributor, Neon, to create a slate of $10 million-plus indie movies. The first film they released was Oz Perkins’ Longlegs — which made more than ten times its budget at the box office last year. Up next, they have Boots Riley’s highly anticipated action comedy sci-fi heist movie, I Love Boosters.
The Hawaii-based Kao, 48, is a former lawyer and one-time aspiring sports agent before he realized “the Jerry Maguire thing” wasn’t a creative enough path. He fell in love with movies as a “VHS kid” growing up in Kansas City. “I probably saw A Clockwork Orange way too young,” he says with a laugh. “Before that I couldn’t even fathom that you could tell a story like this in a motion picture.” His “film school” was producing his first movie, Rampart, while taking a yearlong course at UCLA.
His on-the-job film economics training came from cofounding an international finance, sales and distribution company called Bloom Media with Alex Walton that Endeavor acquired in 2017. (Walton now co-heads WME Independent.) That same year, he and Ryan Gosling started producing under a shingle then dubbed Arcana after working together on The Nice Guys and Terrence Malick’s Song to Song. (Up next, they have the film adaptation of Andy Weir’s sci-fi novel Project Hail Mary.)
On top of all that, Kao is playing in the booming Hollywood-adjacent space of celebrity startups and endorsements. In 2020, he cofounded Parallel, a health and wellness-focused strategic investor which has co-created a plant-based protein drink with Venus Williams called Happy Viking. He’s currently in development with Rachel McAdams on a green beauty company.
“I’m in the business of creating,” Kao says. “I think my purpose is to create, to help people create, and not to get too philosophical about it but I think Waypoint and Parallel are just vehicles for me to do that.”
As Hollywood pushes to shrink its spending, I wanted to know what someone like Kao — steeped in all angles of the business and with a successful track record of $10 million to $50 million movies — sees as the path forward. So last week we spent an hour talking about how his creator-driven mentality is impacting the deals he offers talent, his new horror label Cweature Features, what kinds of projects people should be pitching him and why he thinks “top-heavy movies” contribute to box office blues.
In this issue, Kao will tell you:
The one thing you need to strike a deal with a distributor like Neon
Where Waypoint and Neon intersect on movie taste
Which characteristics a project needs for Kao to want to make it
Why he’s done making movies “only seven people see”
The two genres at the top of Kao’s wish list
His budget range — and its sweet spot
Why he believes “we’ve got to cinch our waist more than ever”
The “carrot” he thinks will lure talent to Waypoint
Why Kao and Waypoint fund their own development
When he likes getting a studio onboard a project
Which modern horror movies have the tone they’re aiming for
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