Participant “Gratitude & Pride”: Ava DuVernay, Martin Sheen, Regina King, Alfonso Cuarón, Matt Damon, Diego Luna & More Ask Hollywood To Embrace Shuttered Company’s Social Impact Legacy
As Neil Young once sang, the now shuttered Participant is gone, but not forgotten.
Some of Tinseltown’s leading talents like Regina King, George Clooney, Ava DuVernay, Daniel Dae Kim, Martin Sheen, Regina King, Alfonso Cuaron, Matt Damon, Diego Luna and more have joined up with the National Domestic Workers Alliance to express “gratitude and pride” in the work put out by the Jeff Skoll-created shingle over the last two decades. At the same time, the A-Listers are imploring the ever increasingly conglomerated industry to keep their eyes on the social impact prize.
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“As we say goodbye to Participant, we must underscore that values-based storytelling is needed now more than ever; to expand the room for debate, to open our hearts to experiences vastly different from our own, to immerse us in the beauty of humanity’s complexities,” the star-studded letter says. “And in the face of unprecedented change and uncertainty, we need deep partnerships between great storytellers, advocates and movements for change now more than ever, to remind us of our agency in shaping the future and the power of our actions. The future and health of our culture and democracy requires more of us to participate, spread hope, and humanity. Democracy is a living, breathing being that we, as participants, give life.”
“There is a whole ecosystem of people, connected by the work of the last 20 years of Participant, ready to work with you,” the correspondence tells the town.
READ THE FULL LETTER ON PARTICIPANT’S LEGACY BELOW
“The stories we tell in Hollywood reflect or shape the lives of so many people around the country,” Regina King added individually. “I wanted to tell Shirley Chisolm’s story for more than a decade because she embodied the Black women who do the important, hard work in the background and whose work is often overlooked,” the Oscar winner and EP said of the John Ridley directed and penned political trailblazer biopic that launched on Netflix on March 22. “With Shirley, Participant gave her story – and mine – space to be seen.”
On April 16, founder and ebay billionaire Skoll told staff that Participant was shutting down and almost all the employees were being let go. Focusing on the big picture from the jump, Participant garnered two Academy Award Best Picture winners over its 20-year run in Spotlight from Open Road and Universal’s Green Book, and had a piece in DreamWorks’ Oscar winner Lincoln. Over its run, Participant by the numbers equals 135 films, five series, 21 Oscars — including the duo of Best Pictures, four Best Documentaries and two Best International Features — 18 Primetime Emmys and more than $3.3 billion in global box office.
Cuaron’s Roma, the Al Gore-led An Inconvenient Truth; Contagion; Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck; Waiting for Superman; Food, Inc. and Food Inc. 2; Judas and the Black Messiah; RBG; Just Mercy; American Factory; Flee; and most recently Shirley were a handful of the more than 10 dozen films the company put out. On the small and streaming screen, Participant was a big part of DuVernay’s Emmy-winning limited series When They See Us about the teenage boys wrongfully convicted for the 1989 rape of a Central Park jogger.
The company’s commitment to impact on and off screen had real world results says the head of the NDWA
“Our team at the National Domestic Workers Alliance worked alongside Participant and Alfonso Cuarón for the Oscar-winning film Roma to increase the visibility and value of domestic work and lift the voices of domestic workers,” NDWA president Ai-jen Poo told Deadline today. “We saw how the story helped to open up a conversation about care work that was long overdue, and created an opportunity for real world change, including helping bring support for the National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, and access to social security for domestic workers in Mexico,” the labor activist and The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America author stated of the then Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) co-sponsored bill.
“The team at Participant has done this time and again with many films and many movements, since its founding,” Poo added. “Our hope is that this work, and these types of partnerships continue to flourish, and in talking about it with our partners in the entertainment and advocacy worlds, we decided to use this letter as an invitation to all to join us in this effort.”
While the lights have dimmed at Participant since Skoll’s announcement over two weeks ago, they have not gone out entirely. Besides its stellar library, Participant still has starring Gillian Anderson and Helen Mirren starring White Bird coming out via Lionsgate in the fall and a follow-up from the studio’s 2017 hit Wonder; the Sundance premiering Out of My Mind on Disney+; and Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s The Grab documentary, which debuted at TIFF last year and hits theaters in June.
Read the full letter here:
Friends of Filmmaking and Impact,
20 years ago, long before social impact had a place in Hollywood, Participant launched stories into our culture with the explicit goal of changing it. Participant empowered bold storytelling with their faith in the vision of filmmakers, trust in advocates and social movements to utilize those narratives in dynamic campaigns, and most importantly, they never underestimated the public’s appetite for thought provoking subject matter that could power new narratives and offer fresh perspectives.
As artists inspired by and connected to social movements, we have experienced the unique role Participant has played in empowering filmmakers to experiment, innovate, and grow. As advocates, we have seen the real world change sparked by the power of filmmaking and campaigning. Participant, through its model of impact filmmaking combined with forging authentic partnerships between advocates, storytellers and distributors has forever changed the landscape of our public conversation and popular culture. For that we are filled with gratitude and pride in our collaborations with this groundbreaking entertainment institution.
Participant proved that audiences crave films with purpose, having collected 21 Academy Awards out of 86 nominations, and 18 Emmy nominations across five television series. Alongside critical acclaim, its catalog including “Spotlight,” “Roma,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “A Fantastic Woman,” and “When They See Us,” grossed over $3.3 billion at the worldwide box office. The mission was to achieve the “double bottom line,” creating world-class content that inspired social change, which it did.
As we say goodbye to Participant, we must underscore that values-based storytelling is needed now more than ever; to expand the room for debate, to open our hearts to experiences vastly different from our own, to immerse us in the beauty of humanity’s complexities. And in the face of unprecedented change and uncertainty, we need deep partnerships between great storytellers, advocates and movements for change now more than ever, to remind us of our agency in shaping the future and the power of our actions. The future and health of our culture and democracy requires more of us to participate, spread hope, and humanity. Democracy is a living, breathing being that we, as participants, give life.
As we reflect on the accomplishments of Participant, we look forward to championing the next generation of producers that will build upon Participant’s extraordinary body of work, integrating learnings it has offered, seeding new partnerships and innovating within this new media landscape. We call upon Hollywood to meet the moment. There is a whole ecosystem of people, connected by the work of the last 20 years of Participant, ready to work with you.
Signed,
Cristela Alonzo
Courtney Andrialis-Vincent
Yalitza Aparicio
Rosanna Arquette
AV Squad
Justin Baldoni
John Battsek
LaTosha Brown, Black Voters Matter
Scott Budnick, The Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) and 1Community
Tarana Burke, Me Too Movement
Sophia Bush
CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment)
Caring Across Generations
Linda Yvette Chávez
Don Cheadle
George Clooney
Julie Cohen
Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Julie Ann Crommett, Collective Moxie
Alfonso Cuarón
Alan Cumming
Richard Curtis
Matt Damon
Destin Daniel Cretton
Viola Davis
Heino Deckert
Define American
Juan Devis
June Diane Raphael
Daveed Diggs
Abigail Disney
Mark Duplass
Ava DuVernay
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Enfield Road
Brandee Evans
Evotion Media
Vera Farmiga
Jane Fonda
DeVon Franklin
Geena Davis Institute
Anna Gerb
GLAAD
Gold House
Goldcrest Films
Yoni Golijov
Good Energy
Fatima Goss Graves, National Women’s Law Center
Clark Gregg
Davis Guggenheim
Mark Hamill
Ed Harris
Crystal Echo Hawk, IllumiNative
Jamey Heath
Matthew Heineman
Dr. Alisha Hines, The Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA
Louise Hogarth
honto88
IllumiNative
In Creative Company
Alejandro G. Iñarritu
Maikiko James, Women in Film
Steve James
Raquel Jaramillo
Michael Keaton
Daniel Dae Kim
Regina King
Shaka King
Elba Luis Lugo
Diego Luna
MACRO
Michael Mann
Stephanie Marin
Neyda Martinez, THE NEW SCHOOL
Paola Mendoza
Alyssa Milano
Andria Wilson Mirza, Women in Film
National Domestic Workers Alliance
New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT)
Yvette Nicole Brown
Sue Obeidi, Muslim Public Affairs Council Hollywood Bureau
Joshua Oppenheimer
Anshantia Oso, BLD PWR/BLD PWR Productions
David Oyelowo
Piper Perabo
Pierpoline Films
Pillars Fund
Laura Poitras
Ai-jen Poo, The National Domestic Workers Alliance & Caring Across Generations
Pop Culture Collaborative
PopShift
Dawn Porter
Mónica Ramírez, Justice for Migrant Women & The Latinx House
Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Rashad Robinson, Color of Change
Jess Morales Rocketto, Equis Institute
Anthony D. Romero, American Civil Liberties Union
Audrey Rosenberg
Yvonne Russo
Kendrick Sampson, BLD PWR/BLD PWR Productions
Liz Sargent
Steve Sarowitz
Vicki Shabo, New America Better Life Lab’s Entertainment Initiative
Martin Sheen
Octavia Spencer
Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative
Storyline Partners
tao/s
The League
Baratunde Thurston
Yalda T. Uhls, The Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA
USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center
Christine Vachon
Gloria Walton, The Solutions Project
Kerry Washington
Betsy West
Women in Animation (WIA)
Sophie Yan, Everytown for Gun Safety
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