EXCLUSIVE: Stalwart indie producer and studio executive Nathan Kahane is launching True North. Launched with financial backing from Entertainment 360, True North will produce and finance audaciously artistic commercial movies built at price points that make sense for the disruptive moment the industry is navigating.
It is the first true landing spot for Kahane since he left the executive suites of Lionsgate last fall following the exit of his longtime partner and mentor Joe Drake. Kahane had been Lionsgate Motion Picture Group President.
Kahane folds into the new venture a number of projects he shepherded at Lionsgate and is still producing, including Karoshi, Day Drinker, Devil’s Mouth, and American Psycho. That will get him started as he makes some hires and slowly builds the infrastructure of his new venture.
Kahane has been part of several indie film company startups like Good Universe and Mandate. True North’s mandate will not only to percolate films and nurture emerging talented filmmakers, but also to provide financing and strategic support to films. The company’s formula will rely on risk sharing and upside in success for artists and financiers, within the realities of the challenging and fast changing theatrical and streaming distribution businesses.
The new venture is not a producing arm of Entertainment 360, but that management and production company is fully aligned with Kahane’s mission to bring value & upside back to the creatives that pour their lives into these projects. It’s also part of the expansion plan for 360 since it aligned with its capital partner The Carlyle Group. If cross pollination happens, it will be organic but it isn’t why this monied company is cropping up.
The key was the rep and track record of Kahane, a tenured exec and producer who over the years has had a guiding hand in hits that include Knives Out, Hunger Games Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and the John Wick franchise at Lionsgate. Before that, , and formerly Juno, Harold and Kumar, and Stranger than Fiction when at Good Universe and Mandate.