A decade ago, a movie producer named John Penotti was feeling low.
He had just nearly lost his shirt on a series of independent productions that he made during flush times only to find the 2008 financial crisis had claimed many of the distributors who would buy them. Casting about for a new model, he decided to investigate the Asia market. There was only one problem: He knew nothing about Asia.
Ten years later Penotti has a thriving company, Ivanhoe Pictures, specializing in the continent. Penotti’s Ivanhoe is a principal behind a different sort of Asian-themed production, one aimed at American audiences: Crazy Rich Asians, the emerging romantic-comedy phenomenon set in the United States and Singapore that opened in theatres this week.
Read more about the role Ivanhoe Pictures played in bringing Crazy Rich Asians to the big screen.