Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, a Best Feature Documentary Oscar nominee in 2005 for Super Size Me, has entered his multiplatform production company, Warrior Poets, into a strategic partnership with Authentic Brands Group, LLC (ABG), owner of a global portfolio of fashion, sports and entertainment brands.
Per the agreement, Warrior Poets can tap into ABG’s globally recognized brands for the development of new scripted and unscripted projects for distribution across multiple platforms including film, television, and digital.
Warrior Poets has produced a number of notable documentary films, television and digital series. Documentaries include One Direction: This Is Us, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Comic-Con: Episode IV – A Fan’s Hope, Mansome, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? and Freakonomics. Among Warrior Poets’ TV projects are the FX series 30 Days, Showtime’s Seven Deadly Sins and CNN’s Morgan Spurlock Inside Man which has been greenlit for a fourth season. Digital projects include Yahoo’s Losing It with John Stamos, AOL’s Connected and Smartish, the upcoming channel in collaboration with Maker Studios.
ABG owns, manages, and builds the long-term value of fashion, sports, and entertainment brands including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Muhammad Ali, Juicy Couture, Jones New York, Judith Leiber, Frederick’s of Hollywood, Hickey Freeman, Prince, Spyder, Tapout, and Tretorn.
“Warrior Poets provides a vehicle for our brands to reach a wider audience and deliver new experiences across a multitude of channels,” said Nick Woodhouse, president and CMO, ABG. “We are excited to partner with Spurlock and team to further expand ABG’s growing content pipeline, which serves to keep our iconic entertainment properties, fashion, and sports brands firmly top-of-mind around the world.”
“It is a producer’s dream to partner with Authentic Brands Group to develop and produce new projects based on their hugely impressive portfolio,” said Morgan Spurlock, President and Founder, Warrior Poets. “This partnership allows us unprecedented access to these resources and we are already in the works on several exciting new projects.”
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More