When David Kaplan, the New York-based producer of Beth de Araújo’s Sundance prizewinning “Josephine,” arrived at the fireside chat hosted by European Film Market on Sunday afternoon, he sounded like he’d been working across different time zones, which, by all accounts, he has.
The U.S. deal for “Josephine” to Sumerian Pictures closed late last night in Berlin, which made the timing for the on-stage discussion moderated by Variety quite fitting.
After securing a double prize win at Sundance, the movie was finally sold by WME Independent and CAA Media Finance to upstart U.S. distributor Sumerian in a ‘mid-to-high seven figures,” said Kaplan on stage in Berlin, where the film will play in competition. For a film that most of the market initially resisted, it’s a lucrative pact that Kaplan hopes will pay off in the long run, and will also allow investors to get their money back on the film which was budgeted at $6 million and only completed its financing six days into the shoot.
“We had a few offers, varying levels of financing, varying levels of theatrical commitment. Obviously, that plays some role in all of this,” he said candidly.
“It was very important to Beth always that our investors made their money back if they could. They took tremendous risk. It’s important to me as a producer in the same way. Why would anyone want to work with you again if you don’t take care of them in that way, particularly in success?”
Sumerian also offered “a very meaningful screen commitment, a very meaningful P&A commitment,” continued Kaplan, whose company Kaplan Morrison, which he founded with Andrew Morrison three years ago, has so far produced Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” and Mona Fastvold’s “The Testament of Ann Lee.”
Kaplan said Sumerian splurged on “Josephine” and “told (them) this is going to be the flagship.” “I think we just saw that in them, there was a partner who maybe had as much skin in the game as we did and could. You want that.”
The producer, who hinted that he also took some personal risk to make “Josephine” and didn’t take an upfront fee (and possibly no backend either), can relate to that level of dedication.
“Like everybody else on the film, everybody sacrificed for this film,” Kaplan said. “That’s how you make a film with movie stars and a great director and great crew in an expensive city for that amount. It takes a village of people who believe.”
“Josephine” was 12 years in the making and Kaplan came on board in the last three. He had known de Araújo for years and was working with her on another project. But “Josephine” suddenly took priority after de Araújo met Channing Tatum, Kaplan recalled.
“She called me up and said, ‘Well, I know we’re supposed to be making this other film, and I’m still very excited about that, but I now have two actors for this other script (Gemma Chan had already been attached for years). Would you ever be interested in perhaps doing that first?’” Kaplan said.
“To which I said, ‘Gemma Chan, Channing Tatum, this beautiful script of yours that I read years ago that I know you’ve always wanted to make, the movie that you’ve always wanted to make. Yeah, we should probably do that.’”
Kaplan joked about the number of producers who tried to mount it. Among the bunch is no other than Sean Baker (“Anora”). “Someday we have to have a dinner for all the producers of ‘Josephine,’ because collectively, we all made this movie. It just took a very long time.”
“Josephine” is definitely not an easy sale at a time when the market is mostly interested in feel good movies, comedies, romances or genre. Inspired by events de Araújo witnessed as a child, the film tells the story of an 8-year-old who sees a rape in Golden Gate Park. Tatum and Chan play Josephine’s parents, who must navigate the little girl’s trauma amid the quest for justice for the survivor.
Despite de Araújo’s debut “Soft & Quiet” which was critically acclaimed at South by Southwest upon premiering in 2022, “Josephine” was nearly impossible to finance given its topic.
“99% of the people we went to and said, ‘Would you like to make this film?’ said, ‘Absolutely not,’” Kaplan recalls.
“Resistance, concern, skepticism about the commerciality, worry from parents about what this film is and worrying that it’s too dark,” Kaplan said of the difficulties to finance the movie. “I think there was a lot of concern that who is this movie for? How is this movie going to be? Is it commercial?”
He also pointed to an “inherent bias against films that are perhaps more geared towards women and assault survivors.”
Tatum and Chan, who served as producers on the film, also played a decisive role in getting the project off the ground. “Gemma’s involvement in this film dates back many years now. She stood by it,” he said. Tatum, meanwhile, went as far as pitching investors. “He was a part of the team, raising the money and trying to make the movie. You just don’t see that very often,” he said.
Mason Lily Reeves, who plays the title role in the film, was discovered just seven weeks before production when de Araújo saw her at a farmers’ market in San Francisco.
“Beth… saw her in a crowd at a market seven weeks before we started shooting,” Kaplan said. De Araújo approached Reeves’ mother directly. The team had seen roughly 90 children, including an experienced young actor, but de Araújo was resolute. “Immediately, from the first time Beth started working with Mason in the casting process, she was like, ‘This is the girl.’”
Since Reeves was only seven when she was cast, it got more complicated for the production. “In America, there are labor laws,” Kaplan noted. “Casting someone younger meant that our schedule had to be longer and we had to spend more money on this film for days just to cast Mason.”
Ultimately, the film was financed by three equity partners: Spark Features; Kinematics (“The Apprentice”); and Yintai Entertainment (“The Testament of Ann Lee”), which came aboard during production. The close came perilously late. “We closed the financing… six days into principal photography. Not knowing if it would fall apart, even two days before we started production.”
“The film shot in San Francisco, a decision de Araújo insisted on. “The texture of the city animates the movie. We could not fake San Francisco and didn’t want to.”
Kaplan’s banner now is developing about six projects, including Brady Corbet’s and Mona Fastvold’s next projects, as well as the highly anticipated sequel to “It Follows,” David Robert Mitchell’s cult 2014 genre film, which Neon has boarded.
“We have partners in both U.S. and internationally to release the film,” he said, adding that the sequel will “hopefully start shooting in the months to come.”
Kaplan is also in post with another ambitious project, “Triumph of the Will,” which is directed by Gabriel Nussbaum with a cast led by Shira Haas (“Unorthodox”). The film is a sprawling period movie set during WWII and stars Haas as a woman who leaves her husband in Amsterdam in 1937 to start a new life with her daughter in Berlin, where she takes up with a firebrand rabbi on a mission to help Jews get out of the country.
variety.com
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