Emmy® Award-winning producers Steven Weinstock and Glenda Hersh, executive producers and co-CEOs of prolific prodco Truly Original (a subsidiary of Banijay), today announced they have forged an overall deal with lauded entertainment studio The Cinemart. Run by Co-CEOs and producing partners Julia Willoughby Nason and Michael Gasparro, New York-based The Cinemart has long been known for its groundbreaking, award-winning series and features that explore powerful, complex stories and bring important social issues to light.
Through the deal with Truly Original, The Cinemart will expand its development and production operations in premium documentaries and other genres of unscripted programming.
In 2023, The Cinemart released Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets on Amazon and two seasons of Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal on Netflix, all three of which were the #1 television series on their respective streaming service.
The Cinemart was founded in 2011 by Nason, executive producer of feature documentary Welcome to Leith, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival before airing on PBS and earning Nason an Emmy nomination. In 2017, The Cinemart first partnered with producer and showrunner Michael Gasparro to create and produce two docuseries with Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Roc Nation as producers: the Peabody Award-winning Time: The Kalief Browder Story for Spike TV (now Paramount) and the Emmy Award-winning Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story for Paramount. Nason served as director, producer and writer for both projects.
Following their initial success, Nason and Gasparro partnered on a string of critically acclaimed and top-rated projects for which The Cinemart is known, including Hulu’s Emmy-nominated Fyre Fraud, Netflix’s The Pharmacist, and Amazon’s hit series LuLaRich (Nason served as producer, director and writer on those series, and Gasparro served as showrunner and producer). In 2023, the team also co-directed and produced for Netflix season two of Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.
Said Weinstock and Hersh in a joint statement, “The Cinemart produces some of the highest-quality and thought-provoking content on television, driven by their unique aesthetic and superb taste. We’re delighted they chose to set up shop at Truly Original and are eager to partner to help expand their reach across premium doc and other unscripted programming.”
Added Truly Original’s Head of Development, Chachi Senior, “I’m thrilled to be working closely with Mike and Julia, and our development teams are genuinely compatible and creatively aligned – that will result in some exciting and provocative offerings for buyers across all key platforms.”
Nason and Gasparro said, “Truly Original’s impressive record of consistent and enduring success drew us to collaborate with them, and we know that deep expertise will help accelerate our own work in the premium docuseries space. We believe our respective teams bring complementary skills and experiences to the table which we’re all excited to capitalize on in the months ahead.”
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