Documentarian Alex Gibney Teams up With a Google Billionaire
At a time when the documentary film business is atrophying, one of the world’s leading documentarians, Alex Gibney, has taken on a powerful partner: Wendy Schmidt, a billionaire philanthropist by way of Google.
“We’ve been managing to make films on important social issues for a long time, but finding and getting those stories to audiences has been a challenge, in part because of the consolidation of the entertainment industry,” Mr. Gibney said in a video interview on Wednesday. “By partnering up with Wendy, we are ensuring that Jigsaw will be around for the long haul,” Mr. Gibney said, referring to Jigsaw, his company. Gibney, 71 years old, announced that he sold a majority interest in Jigsaw Productions, to Ms. Schmidt. She is married to Eric Schmidt – the former CEO of Google. Mr. Gibney, who has been running the company since the early 2000s, will continue to do so. The company has produced over 80 films. Those include “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief,” “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” and the Oscar-winning “Taxi to the Dark Side,” about the use of torture by the United States in its “war on terror.”
Jigsaw, which turns a profit, according to Mr. Gibney, also has a nonfiction TV business (more than 200 episodes produced) and a growing podcast division. Jigsaw is based in New York and currently employs 15 people.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Ms. Schmidt, 69 said in a video that Jigsaw will broaden its editorial focus, including more stories on ocean health and climate change, topics that are central to her family’s philanthropy. She said that her goals for Jigsaw included deepening “impact storytelling and public interest journalism,” along with helping the company find “more innovative distribution options,” which could include virtual reality experiences.
“This is about trying to assume a mantle, a role that we think is a vital one in the film business,” Ms. Schmidt said. “Documentary film is
such a powerful tool, especially today with the division in our society.” “Human society, in my view, is at an inflection point,” she continued. “We are existentially threatened by the technology we’ve created as well as by the failure of systems on the planet to support us because they’ve become so compromised.”
Ms. Schmidt’s investment allows Jigsaw expand into Los Angeles and hire more staff. Jigsaw has already hired Courtney Sexton, who was a senior executive at Participant Media. Participant Media had been Hollywood’s leading producer of socially conscious content until it shut down last year. Schmidt claimed that she made a proposal for Participant Media that would have saved it, but the owner rejected her offer. Jigsaw, for example, relies on studios and streaming platforms to distribute its content. Such partners have cut back — especially on social justice topics — in the face of continuing weakness at the box office, higher labor costs and increased profit pressure from Wall Street.
Streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix have started to sell ads, and advertisers prefer easily digestible, apolitical content. The documentary “No Other Land,” a film produced independently about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, is considered the frontrunner for the best documentary at the upcoming Academy Awards. However, it has not been able to secure distribution in America. In some ways, by purchasing Jigsaw, Ms. Schmidt is following another philanthropic giant from Silicon Valley, Laurene Powell Jobs. She is the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In 2020, Ms. Powell Jobs helped the Oscar-winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) and a partner start Concordia, a studio for documentaries.
“When you tell me a story that captures my imagination and my heart — shows me courage, shows me inspiration, shows me human connection to something bigger than myself — I’m going to listen to you and follow you,” Ms. Schmidt said. “That’s the promise that we see in this arrangement.”
However, she added, “it is a business. I will treat this as a business.
