Participant (company)

Founding and early investments The company was founded in January 2004 as Participant Productions by Jeffrey Skoll, the "second employee" of eBay, Skoll was the company's first chief executive officer, but stepped down in August 2006. Once the decision was made to go ahead with production, the company asked non-profit organizations to build campaigns around the release. The new company quickly announced an ambitious slate of productions. Its first film was the drama film American Gun (2005), with equity partner IFC Films. Participant Productions contributed half the budget of each film. At the same time, the company began to implement an environmentally friendly strategy: Syriana was the company's first carbon-neutral production, and the company created carbon offsets for the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth (2006). First films and financial problems, maturing growth , won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on March 5, 2006, for his role in the company's geopolitical thriller film Syriana (2005). In 2005, the company suffered its first stumble. It again agreed to co-finance a picture with Warner Bros., Vadim Perelman's second feature, Truce. Although Perelman claimed he had "never been moved by a script to such an extent", North Country did poorly at the box office despite recent Academy Award-winner Charlize Theron in the lead. At the Cannes Film Festival in May, the company bought the right to distribute the forthcoming drama film Fast Food Nation (2006) directed by Richard Linklater in North America in return for an equity stake. A month later, it bought distribution rights to the documentary Murderball in return for an equity stake. It also executive produced and co-financed Al Gore's global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. As heavier production scheduling grew, the company added staff. Ricky Strauss was named the first president in March 2005, with oversight of production, marketing and business development. Attorney and former non-profit chief executive Meredith Blake was hired in June as its Senior Vice President of Corporate and Community Affairs, to oversee development of awareness and outreach campaigns around the social issues raised in the company's films in cooperation with non-profit organizations, corporations, and earned media. The company's non-film-production efforts continued to grow. The company provided an undisclosed amount of financing in February 2005 to film distributor Emerging Pictures to finance that company's national network of digitally equipped cinemas (with Emerging Pictures distributing Participant's films). The company also began its first socially relevant outreach project, helping to finance screenings of the biographical film Gandhi (1982) in the Palestinian territories for the first time as well as in the countries of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In support of its upcoming film, An Inconvenient Truth, the studio negotiated a deal for distributor Paramount Classics to donate five percent of its U.S. domestic theatrical gross box-office receipts (with a guarantee of $500,000) to the Alliance for Climate Protection. The company had a very successful 2005 awards season, with eleven Academy Award nominations and one win. Murderball was nominated for Best Documentary Feature. Film line-up addition and continued growth (pictured with actress Meg Ryan in 2007), founder and chief executive officer of Participant Media, stepped down in 2006 after appointing James Berk to be chief executive officer. In June, the company announced it would partner with New Line Cinema (a subsidiary of Warner Bros.) to produce The Crusaders, a drama about Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), a landmark ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States which ended racial segregation in public schools. But the film never got beyond the development stage. In September, the company entered into an agreement to co-produce the drama film The Visitor (2008) with Groundswell Productions, and two months later agreed to co-produce (with Sony Pictures Classics) a documentary film about the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, Standard Operating Procedure (2008), directed by Errol Morris. The company also took an equity position in and a co-production credit for Chicago 10 (2007), an animated documentary film about the 1969 Chicago Seven conspiracy trial. Finally, in December, the company agreed to finance and produce the documentary film Man from Plains (2007), directed by Jonathan Demme, that followed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter as he promoted his political-science book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006). The company also co-financed, with Warner Independent Pictures, the documentary film Darfur Now (2007), and, with Universal Studios and others, co-financed the biographical film ''Charlie Wilson's War'' (2007). The film had the biggest budget of any of the company's films since Syriana. the founding executive director of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Foundation and former president and chief executive officer of Hard Rock Cafe International. Berk's duties included daily operations and management, earned media efforts and corporate branding. • The company was also one of the backers in April 2006 which invested $1 billion in Summit Entertainment, allowing that company to restructure itself as a full-fledged film studio. This did not become known, however, for near three years. The film and song won their respective categories in February 2007. Corporate growth continued in 2007. On January 8, the company hired motion-picture marketing veterans Buffy Shutt and Kathy Jones, both Executive Vice President of Marketing, to coordinate marketing of the company's films. Eight days later, the company hired Tony Award- and Emmy Award-winning event producer John Schreiber as Executive Vice President of Social Action and Advocacy to enhance the company's earned media, non-profit and corporate outreach and advocacy campaigns. February saw the hire of Adrian Sexton as Executive Vice President to oversee digital and global media projects, and April saw veteran production head Jonathan King join the company as Executive Vice President of Production. Lynn Hirshfield was hired in May as Vice President of Business Development to launch the company's publishing division, and saw Bonnie Abaunza and Liana Schwarz both Vice President of Social Action Campaign Development and Operations to assist with social outreach and advocacy campaigns in mid-June. In November, the company signed a deal with actress Natalie Portman's newly formed production company, Handsomecharlie Films, under which the two studios would co-produce socially relevant films for a two-year period. No films were produced under this agreement, however. The same month, the company hired veteran Showtime producer John Moser to oversee development and production of original programs for television and home cable. But despite the management activity and expansion, not all of the company's films did well. Chicago 10 did not sell for several months after it premiered at Sundance, and only significant editing and a reduction in running time led to a distribution deal. but the project entered development hell, as well as the feature-length documentary about the 2007 Live Earth concert later. Five months later the company agreed (with Broken Lizard) to co-produce and co-finance the company's first comedy film, Taildraggers, revolving around five pilots trying to stop oil extraction from an Alaskan preserve. As of June 2009, however, the film had not been produced. Participant then signed a co-production deal with State Street Pictures to finance the biographical drama, Bobby Martinez about the eponymous Latino surfer in November. The film entered development hell for nearly two years but hired Ric Roman Waugh to rewrite and direct in April 2009, with supposed production by the beginning of 2012. By the end of 2007, the company was seen as a key player in documentary production. Name change, more political outreach In March 2008, Participant Productions changed its name to Participant Media to reflect the firm's expansion into television and non-traditional entertainment media. The company continued to expand its social advocacy and outreach efforts in 2008. On January 16, 2008, it joined and made a financial contribution to a $100 million United Nations-sponsored fund which would provide backing for films which combatted religious, ethnic, racial, and other stereotypes. Fueling the company's expansion was the creation of a $250 million fund with Image Nation, a start-up film studio based in the United Arab Emirates which is a division of the Abu Dhabi Media Company. Each company contributed roughly half of the fund's total (although some funding came from loans). To boost its marketing efforts, the company also hired Jeffrey Sakson as Vice President of Publicity in April 2008. In September 2008, Participant Media and PublicAffairs Books signed a deal under which PublicAffairs would publish four original paperback books designed to expand upon the social messages in Participant's films. The first book to be published under the pact was Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food Is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer—And What You Can Do About It. In 2009, the company signed a first look deal with Summit Entertainment. In March, Participant announced a co-financing deal with Tapestry Films to produce Minimum Wage, a comedy about a corrupt corporate executive sentenced to live for a year on a minimum wage salary. July saw Participant set up a co-financing deal with three other studios to produce The Colony, an eco-horror film. It, too, was never produced. The 2007 awards season saw several more Academy Award nominations for the company's films. Its films had a combined seven Golden Globe Award nominations, although it won none. Philip Seymour Hoffman was nominated for his supporting actor role in ''Charlie Wilson's War, Richard Jenkins was nominated for Best Actor in The Visitor, and Alberto Iglesias was nominated for best original score for The Kite Runner. But the studio won no Oscars that year. The success during awards season did not extend into 2008. The company had only three films released during the year (Every Little Step, Pressure Cooker, and Standard Operating Procedure''), and none of them was nominated for an award from a major arts organization. However, on November 19, 2008, the Producers Guild of America gave Participant founder Jeff Skoll its Visionary Award. (pictured), a lobbyist convicted on charges of fraud and corruption, was the subject of a Participant Media film, Casino Jack and the United States of Money. The role campaign finance and lobbying play in political corruption are among the socially relevant topics Participant Media addresses in its films. In 2009, it saw the company continue to aggressively produce both feature films and documentaries. In January, it announced that it would produce Paul Dinello's Mr. Burnout (about a burned out teacher seeking to rekindle his love of teaching) and Furry Vengeance (a comedy starring Brendan Fraser about an Oregon real estate developer who is opposed by animals). But only Furry Vengeance was produced. That same month Participant signed a five-year production and distribution deal with Summit Entertainment. The agreement, which covered titles financed by Participant's $250 million production agreement with Imagination Media, was nonexclusive (meaning Participant could seek distribution of films by other companies) and was limited to four projects a year. The script went into development hell. The same month, the company agreed to co-finance (with Krasnoff/Foster Entertainment) a biographical drama titled History on Trial—which was intended to document the true story of Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Jewish studies who was sued by Holocaust deniers David Irving for libel. The film was not produced, but the company did go on to make Denial, starring Rachel Weisz, about the same subject in 2016. The company also announced a number of productions in May 2009, including: The Crazies, a remake of the 1973 film of the same name; Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a film about the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal; Help Me Spread Goodness, a comedy starring and directed by Ben Stiller about a banking executive who is caught by a Nigerian Internet scam (the film was not produced); and The Soloist, a drama starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. based on the true story of Nathaniel Ayers, a brilliant musician who develops schizophrenia and becomes homeless. The firm's TakePart website also released a new iPhone application, Givabit, which solicits charitable donations for Participant Media's nonprofit advocacy partners from iPhone users once a day. Liana Schwarz was promoted to Senior Vice President of Campaign Development and Operations. On January 28, 2010, Participant Media co-presented director Mark Lewis' documentary, Cane Toads: The Conquest at the Sundance Film Festival. The film, according to Daily Variety said, was the "first specialty doc filmed in digital 3D." The studio's hit documentary, Waiting for "Superman", garnered media acclaim, and Participant inked a worldwide distribution deal with Paramount shortly before its premiere at Sundance. It also sold North American distribution rights for its documentary, Countdown to Zero, to Magnolia Pictures, and distribution rights to its documentary Climate of Change to Tribeca Film (a division of Robert De Niro's Tribeca Enterprises). The company also received a $248,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to raise awareness about access to quality food and childhood obesity. The studio used these funds to create a campaign linked to its promotional efforts for the documentary film Food, Inc. and signed a deal with Active Media to help run the campaign. The "Save My Oceans Tour" involved concerts, art installations, and screenings of Oceans on college campuses. On April 13, Noah Manduke (former president of the consulting firm Durable Good and president of the marketing firm Siegel + Gale) was named chief strategy officer of the Jeff Skoll Group. Skoll created the Skoll Group to oversee his various enterprises, including Participant Media, and Manduke began working with Skoll and Participant Media's top management to begin a strategic planning process and strengthen collaboration between Participant and Skoll's other organizations and companies. Based on the success of its Twilight Saga film series, Summit Entertainment announced on March 8, 2011, that it was making a $750 million debt refinancing with cash distribution to its investors, which included Participant Media. On June 5, The New York Times ran a major story about the studio, declaring: "Participant Media, the film industry's most visible attempt at social entrepreneurship, turned seven this year without quite sorting out whether a company that trades in movies with a message can earn its way in a business that has been tough even for those who peddle 3-D pandas and such." Author Michael Cieply noted that The Beaver, Participant's latest released, cost $20 million but had garnered just $1 million in gross box-office sales after a month in theaters making the film a "flop". The Help, cleared $100 million in late August, and was just short of $200 million worldwide by late December. The Help was the first film since 2010's Inception to be number one at the North American box office for three straight weekends in a row, and was only unseated by another Participant Media film, Contagion. The Help was nominated for four Academy Awards: The film for Best Picture, Viola Davis for Best Actress, and Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer for Best Supporting Actress. Spencer won the Oscar for her role. Participant executives said on October 14, 2011, that the studio would expand its production to make seven to twelve films per year, would begin producing features and series for television, and would expand its online presence. As part of this plan, in November the studio hired advertising executive Chad Boettcher to be executive vice president for social action and advocacy and 20th Century Fox executive Gary Frenkel to be senior vice president for digital products and communities. In January 2012, Participant Media made its first investment in a non-English-language film, the forthcoming Pablo Larraín motion picture No (starring Gael Garcia Bernal). Three weeks later, on February 2, 2012, Participant Media announced that it was partnering with Summit Entertainment, Image Nation, Spanish production company Apaches Entertainment, and Colombian production company Dynamo to produce a supernatural horror film about an American oil company executive who moves his family into a house in a small city in Colombia, only to find the home is haunted. The company announced that Spanish director Luis Quilez would direct from a script by Alex and David Pastor (who developed their script with funding from Participant). On April 16, Participant formed Participant Television, its television division, naming Evan Shapiro as president. Participant also took an equity stake in Cineflix Media Canada-based TV producer and distributor. In December, Participant continued its move into television with the purchase of the Documentary Channel (USA) and Halogen TV's distribution assets to be combined into a new cable channel within its TV division. On January 10, 2013, Participant Media's Lincoln received 12 Academy Award nominations. These included Best Picture, Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Supporting Actress (Sally Field), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Tony Kushner). The following month, Participant Media launched a Latin American production division, Participant PanAmerica, to co-finance Spanish-language films with Mexican producers. The plan calls for 12 films to be made under this division over a five-year period. Participant Media's new millennial targeted cable channel, Pivot, launched on August 1, 2013. In December or 2014, US Senator Tom Udall introduced a sense of Senate resolution that would call on all relevant US agencies to locate and declassify and make public all documents concerning the mass killings in Indonesia, a process buoyed forward by the release of The Act of Killing and Participant's The Look of Silence, both Academy Award nominated documentaries directed by Joshua Oppenheimer. On January 24, 2015, its documentary ''3 ½ Minutes', Ten Bullets'' premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Social Impact. On February 22, 2015, the company won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary with the film CITIZENFOUR. On March 21, 2015, Participant's documentary The Look of Silence won the Audience Award: Festival Favorites category at the South by Southwest Film Festival. CITIZENFOUR, The Great Invisible, Ivory Tower, and The Unknown Known were nominated for a total of seven 2015 Primetime Emmy Awards. CITIZENFOUR won for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film. David Linde leads as CEO On October 13, 2015, the company announced David Linde joined Participant as CEO. On December 16, 2015, the company and Steven Spielberg with Reliance Entertainment and Entertainment One created Amblin Partners. On February 4, 2016, Spotlight screened at the Vatican for their newly formed commission on Sex Abuse which was set up in 2014 to find ways to protect children from sex abuse during their 2016 3-day meeting. Pete Saunders, a survivor who was appointed to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and who arranged the February 4 screening, was asked to take a leave of absence shortly thereafter. Shortly after winning multiple Oscars, including Best Picture, the Vatican's newspaper praised Spotlight for exposing these abuses. The film, however, did face controversy including some criticism from an author of The New York Times calling it, "a misrepresentation of how the Church dealt with sexual abuse cases", arguing that the movie's biggest flaw was its failure to portray psychologists who had assured Church officials that abusive priests could be safely returned to ministry after undergoing therapy treatments. Another criticism was that the film falsely portrayed Jack Dunn, the public relations head and a member of the board at Boston College High School, as a member of the Boston Archdiocesan cover-up (for which the dialogue itself was mythologised). On February 28, 2016, the company won its first Best Picture Academy Award for Spotlight. The acclaimed drama also picked up the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer). Also in February 2016, the company's films The Look of Silence and Beasts of No Nation won a total of three Independent Spirit Awards. On October 13, 2016, the company acquired SoulPancake, a short-form and digital brand, for a price which are yet to be disclosed as of 2024. On October 31, 2016, the company shut down TV network Pivot due to low ratings and small viewing audiences. At the end of 2016, the company shut down TakePart as part of a shifting strategy. On January 10, 2017, Participant announced its partnership with Lionsgate to distribute films internationally. Soon after, the company's film Deepwater Horizon was nominated for two Academy Awards in 2017. Later that same year, Participant Media released its film Wonder on November 17. The film, starring Jacob Tremblay, Owen Wilson and Julia Roberts, became Participant's highest-grossing film at the worldwide box office. In 2018, the company's film The Post was nominated for two Academy Awards, Wonder was nominated for one Academy Award, and Participant's A Fantastic Woman won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. A Fantastic Woman was credited with helping to change laws in Chile that would give rights to transgender people and transgender actress Daniela Vega was celebrated as a national hero. That same year, Participant's film Roma was named Best Picture by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle. The film also won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. The company's film Green Book was named Best Film by the National Board of Review and won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2018, Participant Media also expanded its virtual reality experience, "Melting Ice" featuring Al Gore, into a four-part series titled, This is Climate Change. In 2019, Participant received a company-record 17 Academy Award nominations including ten for Roma, five for Green Book and two for RBG. Of those 17 nominations, the company won six Oscars including Best Picture for Green Book and Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film for Roma. The success of Roma led to a cultural moment in 2019 called the "Roma Effect," which helped increase visibility and raise awareness for domestic workers in the U.S. and Mexico, where the Mexican Congress voted to pass legislation granting domestic workers access to basic labor rights, such as limited work hours and paid vacation. That year, then-Senator Kamala Harris and Representative Pramila Jayapal introduced the National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights into the US Congress. In collaboration with the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television's Skoll Center for Social Impact Entertainment, Participant published the "State of SIE" report, similar to what it had done a few years earlier with USC when it published the "Participant Index" report. These reports are rare exceptions to Participant Media usually keeping its impact strategies proprietary. On September 8, 2019, Participant debuted its rebrand and logo at the Toronto Film Festival which coincided with the company's 15th anniversary. Participant's 2019 film Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo in the true story of a corporate defense lawyer waging an environmental lawsuit against a chemical giant, and Participant's accompanying impact campaign influenced water protection legislation at the state and federal level in the U.S., as well as the E.U.’s pledge to ban “forever chemicals” in 2020 and 43 multinational companies’ pledges to stop selling them. Via the Dark Waters campaign, Mark Ruffalo became an outspoken advocate against forever chemicals. He testified in front of Congress about the harms of PFAS and met with North Carolina government officials to ask for stronger action. In 2024, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced a first-ever drinking water standard to limit forever chemicals and Mark Ruffalo issued a statement saying to the communities affected by pollution: “Your voices have been heard." On November 30, 2020, Participant terminated its equity stake in Amblin Partners, ending its relationship with the company. In March 2021, Collective directed by Alexander Nanau became the second film nominated in both the Best International Feature and Best Documentary categories for the 93rd Academy Awards. Laura Poitras’ documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed became the second documentary in the history of the Venice Film Festival to win the Golden Lion in September of 2021. Participant's impact campaign for the Academy Award-nominated 2022 documentary, about artist and activist Nan Goldin's personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid crisis, raised more than $130,000 for harm reduction organizations. In October 2021, after a two-year delay due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Participant's 15th anniversary was celebrated at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) with a retrospective screening of 15 of the company's films, entitled “Participant at MoMA: Film and Activism.” In November 2021, Participant was honored with the inaugural Power of Cinema Award from the American Cinematheque. In February 2022, Participant's animated documentary Flee, directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen, about an Afghan refugee's death-defying escape from persecution, made history as the first feature ever to receive Academy Award nominations in the documentary, international, and animation categories. Participant launched an Impact Advisory Council in July 2022. Composed of leaders in the impact and entertainment space, the council is designed to provide feedback and guidance on social impact strategy and strengthen connections to those with shared goals. Shutdown On April 16, 2024, founder Jeff Skoll informed Participant's staff of his decision to shut the company down. The decision was attributed to changes over time in content creation and distribution, especially difficulties in developing successful streaming business models and suspension of production on multiple projects due to the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes. Sources state almost all of the company's staff would be laid off, with a holding company owning Participant's interests in its library of 140 titles. Participant would continue to be involved in certain projects in stages of completion, although it would no longer develop any new content. ==Films==