
In the News

THE WASHINGTON POST: The new Duggar doc is the cold, hard ‘reality TV’ we needed all along
‘Shiny Happy People’ focuses on the intense religious anxiety that lay just beneath the camera-friendly quirkiness of the Duggar family.

VARIETY (EXCLUSIVE): ‘Bad Bets’ Podcast About Disgraced Nikola CEO Trevor Milton Getting Scripted Treatment
The whiplash-inducing rise and fall of American businessman Trevor Milton will be the subject of a new scripted project from Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, the Wall Street Journal, and Story Force Entertainment.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: ‘The Grab’ Review: A Gripping and Timely Look at Land Grabs and Investigative Journalism
'Blackfish' director Gabriela Cowperthwaite examines food and water insecurity, as well as the world of high-stakes investigative journalism, in her new documentary premiering at TIFF.

YAHOO: The Wall Street Journal to Produce New Podcast Series with Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions and Story Force Entertainment
The multi-episode series will focus on Nikola and former CEO Trevor Milton.

VARIETY: The Best Documentary Series of 2021
LulaRich was named one of Variety’s Best Documentary Series of 2021.

VARIETY (EXCLUSIVE): Docuseries on the Duggars and Other Reality TV Families Coming From ‘LuLaRich’ Team at Amazon
Story Force will collaborate with The Cinemart and Chick Entertainment on a docuseries for Amazon Prime.

ROLLING STONE: ‘Oh My God, We’re In a Cult’: New Docuseries Shows the Dark Side of Clothing Brand LuLaRoe
‘LuLaRich’ exposes how company founders recruit “members” into their mid-level marketing scheme through mind control, lies, and manipulation

DEADLINE: Documentary Emmy Awards Dominated By PBS, But Netflix Edging Up
The PBS documentary Belly of the Beast, which exposed eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons, won Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary honors. Showtime’s Kingdom of Silence, a look at journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s life, work, and murder, topped the Outstanding Politics and Government Documentary honors, while Netflix’s Athlete A, a study of the US Gymnastics scandal involving disgraced doctor Larry Nassar, came in as the Outstanding Investigative Documentary winner.

VARIETY: ‘LuLaRich’ Breaks Down the Fall of a Women’s Clothing Giant: TV Review
DeAnne Stidham is a Mormon mother of 14 with Barbie-blonde hair, studded designer stilettos, and a cozy Kris Jenner charm who, with her husband Mark, founded the billion-dollar company LuLaRoe. (You’ve probably seen their leggings, available in loud cat and pizza prints, peddled in your Facebook feed.)

VANITY FAIR: LuLaRoe Exposed: Inside an Alleged Billion-Dollar “Pyramid Scheme”
DeAnne Stidham is a Mormon mother of 14 with Barbie-blonde hair, studded designer stilettos, and a cozy Kris Jenner charm who, with her husband Mark, founded the billion-dollar company LuLaRoe. (You’ve probably seen their leggings, available in loud cat and pizza prints, peddled in your Facebook feed.)

VARIETY: How the LuLaRoe Pyramid Scheme Became the Explosive Amazon Docuseries ‘LuLaRich’ (EXCLUSIVE)
Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason had only been working for a few months on “LuLaRich,” their docuseries about the clothing company LuLaRoe — which operates as a multi-level marketing company, a.k.a. a pyramid scheme — when they learned the company’s co-founders, DeAnne and Mark Stidham, were willing to sit down with them.

THE GUARDIAN: Survivors of California’s forced sterilizations: ‘It’s like my life wasn’t worth anything’
It wasn’t until years after Kelli Dillon went into surgery while incarcerated in the California state prison system that she realized her reproductive capacity had been stripped away without her knowledge.

VARIETY: Peabody Awards 2021 Nominations, including Belly of The Beast
The Peabody Awards Board of Jurors on Tuesday announced this year’s nominees for entertainment, documentaries, news, podcast/radio, children’s & youth, public service and arts. A total of 60 nominees were revealed as representing “the most compelling and empowering stories released in broadcasting and streaming media during 2020.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Belly of the Beast Review: Fighting for Incarcerated Women
When Kelli Dillon was 24 years old, a doctor at the California facility where she was incarcerated sterilized her without consent. That experience, and the way it galvanized Dillon to bring attention to this human rights violation anchors Erika Cohn’s timely and bracing new documentary “Belly of the Beast.

SCREENDAILY: Watchmen director Nicole Kassell, Participant team on fishing industry exposé
It is the same award won by The Boston Globe team in 2003 that inspired Participant’s Spotlight, which won the best picture Oscar in 2016. In addition to Participant, Blye Faust and Nicole Rocklin – who were among the producers on Spotlight – will produce Silver Seas alongside Cori Shepherd Stern (Open Heart).

DEADLINE: Documentary About Controversial LuLaRoe Clothing Empire In Works From ‘Fyre Fraud’ Team
We hear that Cinemart, the documentary team of directors Jenner Furst, Julia Willoughby Nason and producer Mike Gasparro, is partnering on the documentary LuLaRich with Based on Media’s Blye Faust and Cori Shepherd Stern.

DEADLINE: Riva Levinson-Inspired Drama In Works At Uni TV From Blye Faust, Cori Shepherd Stern, Karyn Usher & Lisa Zwerling
Oscar-winning Spotlight producer Blye Faust and Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning producer Cori Shepherd Stern (Bending the Arc, Warm Bodies) have acquired the exclusive rights to Beltway strategist Riva Levinson’s life story for a TV series.

VARIETY: A-List Producers, Executives Pledge to Mentor Women Directors With ReFrame Rise
A group of A-list producers and executives are combating Hollywood gender inequality in a pledge to mentor women directors in the middle of their careers. That’s a time when, at least one prominent study suggests, they disappear from show business entirely.

AP: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck hope Bending the Arc inspires millennials
The story of the global nonprofit Partners in Health is the story of a few young idealists who couldn’t have started any smaller — trying to delivery primary health care in rural Haiti 30 years ago.

VARIETY: Why Spotlight’s Best Picture Win Is a Triumph of Excellence Over Ego
It may take its name from the real-life Boston Globe investigating team, but “Spotlight” is in some respects a curious title for a film that so determinedly refuses to call attention to itself.