When David Kaplan, the New York-based producer of Beth de Araujo’s Sundance Prize-winning “Josephine,” arrived for a fireside chat hosted by the European Film Market on Sunday afternoon, he sounded like he was working across different time zones, which he apparently was.
The U.S. deal for “Josephine” with Sumerian Pictures was completed late last night in Berlin, making the timing of the on-stage discussion moderated by Variety very appropriate.
After winning a double prize at Sundance, the film was ultimately sold by WME Independent and CAA Media Finance to upstart U.S. distributor Sumer for “a mid- to high-seven figure number,” Kaplan said on stage in Berlin. It reached $1 million and was fully funded just six days after filming began.
“We had several offers, different levels of funding, different levels of theatrical commitment. Obviously, that plays some role in all of this,” he said candidly.
“It was always very important to Beth that investors get their money back as much as possible. They took a huge risk. It’s just as important to me as a producer. If you don’t take care of them like that, why would anyone want to work with you again, especially if they’re successful?”
Sumer also proposed “a very meaningful screen effort, a very meaningful P&A effort,” Kaplan continued. Kaplan Morrison, the company he co-founded with Andrew Morrison three years ago, has previously produced Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist and Mona Fastvold’s Ang Lee.
Kaplan said the Sumerians splurged on Josephine and “told[them]this was going to be their flagship.” “I think they’ve found that they have a partner who can probably be in the game as much as we are. You want that.”
The producer also took some personal risks to make “Josephine,” hinting that he didn’t take any upfront money (and probably didn’t take any backend either), but you can relate to that level of dedication.
“Everyone made sacrifices for this movie, just like everyone else in the movie,” Kaplan said. “That’s how you can make a movie for that amount of money in an expensive city with movie stars, a great director, a great crew. It takes a village of people who believe.”
Josephine was 12 years in the making, with Kaplan participating in the final three years. He had known de Araujo for years and had worked with her on other projects. But after de Araujo met Channing Tatum, “Josephine” suddenly became a priority, Kaplan recalled.
“She called me and said, ‘Well, I know you’re supposed to be making another movie, and I’m still really excited about it, but this other script now has two actors (Gemma Chan has been lined up for years already). Would you be interested in maybe doing that first?'” Kaplan said.
“And I said, ‘Gemma Chan, Channing Tatum, I read this beautiful script of yours years ago that I know you’ve always wanted to make. It’s the movie you’ve always wanted to make. Well, maybe you should.'”
Kaplan joked about the number of producers who tried to mount it. Among them is none other than John Baker (“Ruth,” “The Wild Canaries”). “One day I’m going to have to have a dinner with all the producers of ‘Josephine,’ because we all worked together to make this movie. It took a very long time.”
Selling “Josephine” is no easy feat at a time when the market is primarily interested in feel-good movies, comedies, romances, and genres. Inspired by events De Araujo witnessed as a child, the film tells the story of an 8-year-old boy who witnesses a rape in Golden Gate Park. Tatum and Chan play Josephine’s parents, who must work through the girl’s trauma as they seek justice for the survivors.
Despite De Araujo’s debut film, Soft & Quiet, receiving rave reviews at South by Southwest when it premiered in 2022, Josephine was nearly impossible to raise funding for due to its buzz.
“Ninety-nine percent of the people we went to said, ‘Would you like to make this movie?'” “Absolutely not,” Kaplan recalls.
Director Kaplan said of the difficulty of raising money for the film, “There was resistance, there was apprehension, there was skepticism about commerciality, there was concern from parents about what the movie was about, and there was concern that it would be too dark.” “I think there were a lot of concerns about who is this movie for? What is this movie going to be like? Is it commercial?”
He also pointed to “perhaps an inherent bias against films directed at women and assault survivors.”
Tatum and Chan, who served as producers on the film, also played a crucial role in getting the project off the ground. “Gemma’s involvement with this film goes back many years. She was very supportive of this film,” he said. Meanwhile, Tatum even made a pitch to investors. “He was part of a team trying to raise money and make a movie. You 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 Araujo saw her at a San Francisco farmers market.
“Beth… I saw her in the crowd at the market seven weeks before we started filming,” Kaplan said. De Araujo approached Reeves’ mother directly. The team examined about 90 children, including young and experienced actors, but de Araujo remained steadfast. “When Beth first started working with Mason during the casting process, she immediately felt, ‘This is the kid.'”
Production was further complicated by the fact that Reeves was only seven years old when she was cast. “America has labor laws,” Kaplan points out. “Casting someone younger meant we had a longer schedule and we had to spend more days and more money on this movie just to cast Mason.”
Ultimately, the film was financed by three equity partners. Kinesiology (“The Apprentice”); and Yingtai Entertainment (“The Testament of Ang Lee”) participated during production. Closing was dangerously delayed. “We closed on financing…six days after we started principal photography. Even two days before we started production, we didn’t know if it was going to break.”
“The movie was shot in San Francisco, which director de Araujo insisted on. The texture of the city gives life to the movie. We can’t fake San Francisco, and we didn’t want to.”
The Kaplan banner currently has about six projects in development, including Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold’s next project and the long-awaited sequel to David Robert Mitchell’s cult 2014 genre film It Follows with Neon.
“We have partners both in the United States and abroad to release the film,” he said, adding that the sequel “hopes to begin filming in the coming months.”
Kaplan is also attached to another ambitious project, Triumph of the Will, directed by Gabriel Nussbaum and starring Shira Haas (Unorthodox). The film is an epic historical drama set during World War II, with Haas playing a woman who leaves her husband in Amsterdam in 1937 to start a new life with her daughter in Berlin, where she teams up with a fire brigade rabbi on a mission to help Jews flee the country.
