Industry veterans David Mitchell and Tomer DeVito have founded creative collective Wild Gift, a production company working across all formats with a highly curated talent roster. Mitchell will serve as Wild Gift managing director, running the company’s day-to-day business, with DeVito as a collaborating EP.
A producer at Ridley Scott’s RSA Films for over two decades, Mitchell most recently served as the company’s managing director. He’s collaborated with many A-list directors, artists and celebrities over the years, producing high-profile global campaigns, commercials and branded content. His work includes Jake Scott’s “Gentleman’s Wager” films for Johnnie Walker and Nike’s Emmy-winning commercial “Awake,” along with Tony Scott’s iconic “Beat The Devil” for BMW Films starring Clive Owen, Gary Oldman and James Brown. DeVito has a storied production background as well, coming up the ranks at RSA Films before founding independent creative boutique Native Content in 2010, where he also remains as managing director, managing the company’s day to day business.
Mitchell and DeVito saw founding Wild Gift as an opportunity to push one another to do what they hadn’t yet done in their collective experience. Their mission is to foster a diverse, tightly knit creative community of genuinely good people with direct access to leadership. Wild Gift’s eclectic roster so far includes award-winning film, television, commercial and music video directors Tobias Granström, Tomas Skoging, Michael Mann, Tate Taylor, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Ewan McGregor, Duncan Jones, Kaz Firpo, DJ Caruso, Øcean Vashti Jude and Arielle Pytka.
“Our focus is on filmmakers who are not only great at their jobs, but also collaborative and passionate in their approach,” Mitchell said. “Our roster so far is a clear reflection of that, and we’ll have even more exciting news to share soon.”
“Wild Gift will genuinely be a partner to our clients,” DeVito added. “We will always deliver at a very high level creatively and collaborate to solve any challenges, like an extension of an agency’s own in-house production team.”
“As an MD at RSA over the last three years, helping to run their busy global business shifted my focus away from what I love most, which is producing,” Mitchell said. “Wild Gift lets me get back to working closely with talent while getting my hands dirty once again with the crew in production. Not to sound all kumbaya … but if there’s a team effort with no rigid hierarchy, you bring everyone along and they work hard and give you blood. You walk away with a fantastic product, and everyone has a good time doing it.”
Wild Gift is represented by Pop-Arts on the West Coast, The House of Representatives in the Midwest and MilkToast on the East Coast.
Aleshea Harris’ “Is God Is”: A Primal Scream Of A Movie Inspired By Westerns and Greek Tragedy
Aleshea Harris wrote "Is God Is" with the assumption that it would never be performed as a play, let alone turned into a movie. It was simply a story she needed to get onto the page: A tale of rage and revenge, an ancient Greek tragedy melded with Spaghetti Western tropes centered on contemporary Black women, twins, on an epic, violent journey to find the father who wronged them. She even rewatched Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" while she was writing.
"I've endured so many narratives in which Black women, they're just sort of downtrodden victims, you know? They endure, they gain their strength and we love them because look at what all she can take. I think that's horrific," Harris said in a recent interview. "This was my antidote to that. This was my medicine to myself for that."
That's the thing about art that boldly flies in the face of taboo and stereotypes; Sometimes, it turns out, it's on to something that audiences have been craving too. The Obie-winning stage play, which debuted off-Broadway in 2018, hit a nerve with audiences and critics, garnering comparisons to Tarantino and Martin McDonagh. Soon, talks of a feature film were underway. Harris never thought she'd be the one to direct it, having barely even been on a set before, but producer Janicza Bravo and their mutual friend, playwright Jeremy O. Harris, had other ideas: It was her story after all, she should be the one to tell it.
"It really was like the belief of those folks and that invitation," Harris said. "It was like a switch being flipped. Of course, of course I'm in."
The film, which is now playing in theaters, has garnered similarly effusive praise from critics and audiences. It stars Kara Young and Mallori Johnson as badly scarred twins who, after fending for... Read More