Olivia Wilde is in talks to make her feature documentary directorial debut with the nonfiction studio XTR.
The doc will chronicle the storied, star-filled history of one of the world’s most iconic 1970s music venues. The under-wraps project has been in development for about a year, and more details are coming soon.
“Olivia and I met around 15 years ago and worked together in Haiti after the [2010] earthquake,” says XTR founder and CEO Bryn Mooser. “I started making films there, and she would always help out with them. I’ve been encouraging her to direct this doc for a long time.” Wilde helmed the 2011 comedy short “Free Hugs,” which Mooser produced, and she exec produced several short docs that he directed or produced since 2010’s “Sun City Picture House,” including 2015’s “Body Team 12,” which earned both of them News and Documentary Emmys.
The doc feature is just the latest in a string of high-profile works from XTR, which has produced, financed and distributed more than 80 projects since Mooser founded the studio in 2019. The studio is now involved in making some 25 others. In the last year alone, they’ve produced or exec produced MTV Documentary Films’ Oscar-nominated “Ascension,” the HBO Max series “Menudo: Forever Young,” MUBI’s “Free Chol Soo Lee” and National Geographic Documentary Films’ “The Territory,” along with premiering seven films at Sundance and six at Tribeca. It was also a producer on Apple TV Plus’ Magic Johnson docu series “They Call Me Magic,” which was reportedly made for a then-record price of nearly $30 million per episode.
In July, XTR opened a $10 million, 35,000-square-foot studio and headquarters in Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood, featuring a soundstage, recording studio and production and post-production facilities for their own films and outside projects. “It’s a versatile space for filming interviews and re-creations,” Mooser says. “For us, this studio campus is a total dream, especially the ability to bring people together and create under one roof.” The offices house some 50 employees, including head of film Kathryn Everett and head of development Justin Lacob.
Though XTR has backed doc features and series that have appeared on Netflix, National Geographic, Hulu, MSNBC, CNN, MTV and other outlets, one of its greatest assets is running the nonfiction streaming platform Documentary + (co-founded by Everett and Lacob), which is available on demand and existing free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel platforms. The company says DOC+ is available in over 85 million U.S. households and has experienced a 2000% jump in viewership since 2021.
“This type of studio never really existed in documentary before. Having established ourselves on the majority of FAST platforms, it’s becoming more important than we even had imagined, especially against a backdrop of corporate consolidation in the industry,” Mooser says. “With such an uncertain landscape, it’s great to have a home like this for documentaries.”
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