Michael B. Jordan From The Wire to Creed, Black Panther, and Fahrenheit 451, an actor proves his star power BY MIKE FLEMING JR.
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n Michael B. Jordan’s first trip to Cannes for the Ryan Coogler-directed Fruitvale Station, the young actor walked wide-eyed down the Croisette, smiling when
fans shouted, “Where’s Wallace?” a signature line about his tragic character from the HBO series The Wire. Jordan is the first
Stuart Ford
The former IM Global chief is ready to plug his new company, AGC Studios, into the ever-expanding content arms race BY MIKE FLEMING JR.
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to admit that, while growing up in front of the camera, he was lucky to be in the right place when cast in that seminal series, as well as Friday Night Lights. But he has shown remarkably good judgment in his transition to adulthood. He is emerging as a major star, not just because he's got the acting chops, but for his willingness to work harder than anyone else. He would confirm it with his second film for Coogler, the Rocky sequel Creed. Jordan trained hard, sure, but then Coogler headed to Philadelphia to scout gyms and watched the footwork
ong a charismatic wheeler-dealer on the Croisette as IM Global’s
of the fighters there. He told Jordan they weren’t ready. The actor
principal, Stuart Ford returns to Cannes with a new company and
didn’t bat an eyelid. He put in months of extra work, so much so
a different mindset on how to best use the shifting landscape.
that he looked more ring-ready than his onscreen opponent, the
Ford didn’t plan to build AGC Studios until he left IM Global in an
acrimonious exit last August. The dispute was with Donald Tang’s Tang
former WBC cruiserweight champ Tony Bellew. Fresh from his turn as a powerful nemesis in Coogler’s Black
Media Partners, who a year earlier bought IM Global for $200 million.
Panther, as he preps a return to the ring for Creed 2, Jordan is
But now, thanks to backing from Latin America’s MediaNet Partners,
reflective on how far he and Coogler have come, and how glad
Symantec CEO Greg Clark and Image Nation Abu Dhabi, Ford thinks
they are to travel the path together. “I was coming off Chronicle
AGC is a better mousetrap.
when I met him, right at the time where I started to really
He comes to Cannes with at least two $100 million budget pictures
question myself,” he remembers. “I wanted to know, can I carry a
and will continue to play that game. But he fully expects the growing
movie or not? I’d been in ensemble cast projects that did OK, but
demand for content from streaming services to become an increas-
I was never the guy. You see some of the most talented actors on
ingly large part of AGC’s focus in the coming years. It provides a better
the planet who can’t open a film. I needed to know.”
opportunity for his and other companies that relied on pre-sales. “It all comes down to versatility of content and in financing of
He saw the promise of an answer in Coogler’s Fruitvale Station script. “I was blown away. It was such a personal project that
that content,” he says. “Instead of being wed to a particular financing
verbalized some of the frustrations that I’ve felt at a time when
structure, which IM Global and most independent companies were in
police shootings were becoming more frequent and people were
the past, the better route is to have maximum flexibility as to how you
recording them. It checked all the boxes. I met with Ryan and we
finance your content from a development perspective—from a produc-
just clicked immediately.”
tion financing perspective—building in to your infrastructure and your capital structure that ability to pivot in all sorts of different directions.” If you’re overwhelmed by the content choice on offer now, Ford says,
Now it is clear we are watching a star bloom before our eyes. Jordan will be in Cannes for the Ramin Bahrani-directed HBO film Fahrenheit 451 he stars in with Michael Shannon. While he’s
you ain’t seen nothing yet. “My personal thesis is that in five years we’ll
shooting, with his sharp Outlier Society Productions chief Alana
have a look back and say, ‘Oh my God, can you believe that there were
Mayo, he is building a slate of film and TV projects that includes
only 400 TV series a year being produced five years ago? And only 800
his directing debut on the David Barclay Moore novel The Stars
feature films being financed?’ I think it’s going to go through the roof."
Beneath Our Feet. The company was also among the first to take
Studios, after all, are plugging into OTT platforms like never before.
the “inclusion rider” challenge leveled by Frances McDormand in
“Disney and Fox are already doing it and commissioning and producing
her Oscar victory speech. ★
original content,” he notes. “That’s the trend that’s going to cause the most excitement for this business. Studios are hampered by only having the infrastructure to release 12 to 15 feature films a year through the traditional theatrical model; those blocks come off as they get more into the digital streaming universe as Netflix has done. They’re going to be buying up huge amounts of content, and content companies, so that they have access to their pipeline and their talent.” Then there’s the emergence of Apple’s content strategy as well as new players from around the world, including the UK and Asia. “It seems inevitable they will all become top tier players. You look at the way kids view content, and it makes you feel that the independent film business—that was so reliant on stars and guaranteeing theatrical distribution in the US—is beginning to seem like a very dated notion now.” ★
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