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Participant, studio behind 'Food, Inc.' and 'An Inconvenient Truth,' shuts down
FOX News ^ | April 16, 2024 6:12pm EDT | Staff

Posted on 04/17/2024 5:28:35 AM PDT by Red Badger

Memo released Tuesday informed Participant's staff of 100 that the 20-year-old studio is winding down operations

Participant, the activist film and television studio that has financed Oscar winners like "Spotlight" and socially conscious documentaries like "Food, Inc," and "Waiting For Superman" is closing its doors after 20 years.

Billionaire Jeff Skoll told his staff of 100 in a memo shared with The Associated Press Tuesday that they were winding down company operations.

"This is not a step I am taking lightly," Skoll wrote in the memo. "But after 20 years of groundbreaking content and world-changing impact campaigns, it is the right time for me to evaluate my next chapter and approach to tackling the pressing issues of our time."

Since Skoll founded the company in 2004, Participant has released 135 films, 50 of which were documentaries and many of which were tied to awareness-raising impact campaigns. Their films have won 21 Academy Awards including best picture for "Spotlight" and "Green Book," best documentary for "An Inconvenient Truth" and "American Factory" and best international feature for "Roma."

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


TOPICS: Arts/Photography; Business/Economy; TV/Movies; Weather
KEYWORDS: aninconvenienttruth; participant

1 posted on 04/17/2024 5:28:35 AM PDT by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger

This is surprising for several reasons.

One is that there is a lot of money out there these days (much of it from foreign sources) to help fund leftist activists, and the left loves their pseudo-documentary propaganda, pioneered by the likes of Michael Moore.

Secondly, by the sounds of it, from a few of the quotes, they are a leftist true believer. People like that don’t usually give up. They’d work for free if necessary. It makes me wonder if they are in to something else, perhaps more radical.


2 posted on 04/17/2024 5:35:07 AM PDT by z3n (Kakistocracy)
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To: Red Badger

How inconvenient for the employees.


3 posted on 04/17/2024 5:37:06 AM PDT by nesnah (Infringe - act so as to limit or undermine [something]; encroach on)
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To: Red Badger

Imagine the CCP has a weekly newsletter — and it calls it quits. Win!


4 posted on 04/17/2024 5:40:39 AM PDT by bobbo666 (Baizuo, )
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To: Red Badger

Did any of these groundbreaking films show a profit? This, im assuming LIB billionaire is putting people out of work ?! Why doesn’t he just make all these employees millionaires, how cruel of him.


5 posted on 04/17/2024 5:41:57 AM PDT by The Louiswu (Pray for Peace in the world.)
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To: Red Badger

If you are truly “revolutionary” and “groundbreaking”, then business would be so good that you wouldn’t need to shut down.

When you are “left leaning” and little more than a propagadist, without outside support; you cannot survive. You are just another expendable branch of the Left political party.

The Left has zero loyalty to anyone, but themselves.


6 posted on 04/17/2024 5:42:17 AM PDT by Hodar (A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.- Burroughs)
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To: Red Badger

Interesting: Waiting for Superman is a fairly anti public school documentary.


7 posted on 04/17/2024 6:00:03 AM PDT by ALPAPilot
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To: z3n

I can say that billionaires tend to not waste their money beyond necessary. Maybe Skoll is finding that he has to use his money and not the house money from the money these films have made and he won’t do that?

In other words, the expense is not warranted for the benefit of trying to change minds any more?


8 posted on 04/17/2024 6:02:28 AM PDT by Jonty30 (He hunted a mammoth for me, just because I said I was hungry. He is such a good friend. )
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To: Red Badger
When you make a movie like "An Inconvenient Truth" that predicts the world will end in 20 years, then 20 years later the world is still here, you sort of lose your credibility.

I'm looking at you, Algore...

9 posted on 04/17/2024 6:08:11 AM PDT by Yo-Yo (Is the /Sarc tag really necessary? Pray for President Biden: Psalm 109:8)
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To: Red Badger

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/participant-shuts-down-film-studio-1235971644/

As Skoll’s message suggests, Participant and companies like it face an uphill battle in the current media landscape. Amid the ongoing economic downturn, the nightmare of making streaming business models work and the pain from production stoppages after last year’s Hollywood labor strikes, there exists a larger reality: The studios are just not making as many movies for adults, especially ones with a conscience.


this source has a few answers?


10 posted on 04/17/2024 6:11:36 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: Red Badger

replaced by AI?


11 posted on 04/17/2024 6:19:15 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: The Louiswu

“Did any of these groundbreaking films show a profit?”

Most do not because their intent is to enshrine leftist opinion in a medium that will endure beyond our lifetimes.

Consider the Robert Redford movie ‘Truth’. It was about CBS trying to smear GWB during an election year. The CBS stories were said by Dan Rather himself that the stories were ‘fake but accurate’. In the movie ‘Truth’ the only thing that was truthful were the names of the people the actors played. Every scenario offered, from GWB’s Texas Air National Guard participation to Laura Bush’s auto accident wherein another person died, were twisted or escalated to paint GWB as the most stupid, dishonest human to ever enter politics. As we all know that is Cho BiDung.

So now when future generations see this movie they will think that it accurately portrays history while nothing could be farther from the ‘truth’.


12 posted on 04/17/2024 6:35:02 AM PDT by ByteMercenary (Cho Bi Dung and KamalHo are not my leaders.)
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To: Red Badger


13 posted on 04/17/2024 6:48:22 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (The worst thing about censorship is █████ ██ ████ ████ ████ █ ███████ ████. FJB.)
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To: z3n

Something else, perhaps more radical.

My bookie took that bet odds are high.


14 posted on 04/17/2024 6:52:59 AM PDT by Vaduz
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To: Red Badger

Green Book was a good movie. Roma was okay.

Didn’t know the studio was also behind the Big Algore Lie movie.


15 posted on 04/17/2024 7:20:47 AM PDT by Recovering_Democrat
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To: ALPAPilot

Yes, I recall it was a bit more intelligent than the normal leftist crap.


16 posted on 04/17/2024 7:21:46 AM PDT by Recovering_Democrat
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To: Jonty30

“In other words, the expense is not warranted for the benefit of trying to change minds any more?”

similarly, i was thinking his agiprop outfit might have gotten fat and lazy and were churning out total dreck the last few years, dreck so drecky that it wasn’t even propaganda-worthy anymore ... so, sayonara billionaire bucks ...


17 posted on 04/17/2024 7:46:21 AM PDT by catnipman (A Vote For The Lesser Of Two Evils Still Counts As A Vote For Evil)
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