‘Nickel Boys’ Production Company Louverture Films Adds Key Execs And Collaborators As Co-Founder Danny Glover Steps Down As CEO
EXCLUSIVE: As it preps for the release of notable titles like Nickel Boys, production company Louverture Films has added a handful of key execs and collaborators, including two principal partners and a chief financial officer.
As those new arrivals come aboard, co-founder Danny Glover has announced he is stepping down as CEO but will remain a partner. Melony Lewis and Adam Lewis have joined as principal partners and Longtime German film finance expert Frank Lehmann is now CFO. Colombian producer Diana Bustamante, a significant figure in South American cinema and former head of the Cartagena Film Festival, is collaborating with Louverture on a number of projects.
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Along with the Lewises, the company’s partners include Glover, co-founder Joslyn Barnes, Susan Rockefeller, Sawsan Asfari, Tony Tabatznik and Jeffrey L. Clark.
Louverture is known for a number of acclaimed international co-productions, among them narrative titles Memoria, Zama, Capernaum and documentaries Gunda, Hale County This Morning This Evening and The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. Amazon MGM Studios will release Nickel Boys, based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, in theaters October 25.
As to Glover’s decision to step away from his CEO role, Barnes said it was an organic one. The actor, producer and activist, who will turn 78 next month, “is at a different stage and is interested in keeping up his involvement with the company without the day-to-day management aspects. We will really enjoy continuing to work closely together.”
In a statement provided to Deadline, Glover said, “Louverture Films has been one of the most significant ventures and adventures of my life and career, and I am tremendously moved and proud of the way the company has evolved since we first began with the vision of working with artists and producers based primarily in the global South. After seeing over 60 projects realized, and being involved in countless efforts to make the industry more equitable and inclusive, I feel strength in entrusting this legacy with a remarkable team led by my longtime producing partner Joslyn Barnes and our fellow principal partners.”
Named for Haitian Revolution leader Toussaint Louverture, the company was founded in 2005. In an interview with Deadline, Barnes said the changes to the company’s structure reflect an effort to evolve after two decades in a highly dynamic sector. “We’ve always been a small, boutique company that has done mainly smaller, independent arthouse fiction, especially from countries in the global South,” she said. “Because of the ways that the market has changed, we have changed with that.”
Louverture is now branching out to develop episodic projects across scripted, non-fiction and animation as well as genre projects and new art editions and installation works. Widely exhibited artist William Kentridge’s non-fiction series, Self Portrait as a Coffee Pot, was shown during the 2024 Venice Art Biennale. Barnes said it indicates the direction of the company. “We’ve started to think of outside-of-the-box distribution,” she said. Global streaming rights to the Kentridge series were sold to Mubi, but the show will continue to travel. In Venice, 10,000 people came through the site-specific exhibition and got the QR code, Barnes estimated. The code enables viewers to watch the series on Mubi when it premieres and gives stakeholders a different way to get work into an increasingly congested distribution system.
Along with Nickel Boys, which Barnes co-wrote and produced with Plan B, Anonymous Content and Amazon MGM Orion, Louverture has several other upcoming projects of note. The list includes Harvest, starring Caleb Landry Jones (Get Out, Dogman); Lucrecia Martel’s feature documentary Chocobar; and Oscar nominee Debra Granik’s non-fiction series Conbody Vs Everybody, which screened at Sundance last January. The company also has new projects in the pipeline with notable directors including Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Sky Hopinka, Mike Mills, Martine Syms and Ljubomir Stefanov.
Lehmann, a former banker who has advised on projects including The Last Station and Ron Howard’s Rush as well as the festival-launched episodic series Carlos. He called it “a great privilege for me to join this visionary production company and excellent team at Louverture.” He added, “I don’t know of any other U.S. company that has so consistently worked with such stellar artists and with such a depth of understanding of international collaboration, particularly in the countries of the South.”
As CFO, Lehmann will report to Barnes and also work closely with Bustamante and Vice President of Non-Fiction Maya E. Rudolph, who joined Louverture to lead and develop a slate of independent, international documentary features and series. Rudolph’s roster includes projects by Alison O’Daniel, Sky Hopinka and Mike Mills.
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