Morgan Spurlock To Develop Films From The Associated Press
Every single day, the good men and women of The Associated Press probably find and write more original stories than Hollywood writes in a year. Leave it to Morgan Spurlock to take advantage of that collection of stories.
Spurlock and his Warrior Poets banner have just signed an exclusive deal granting them "unlimited access to the extensive resources of AP and its broadcast, digital and mobile assets." It allows the company to make any kind of scripted or unscripted project in film, television or digital based on the "AP's vast library of award-winning, global content." Below, read more about the Morgan Spurlock Associated Press deal.
Deadline originally wrote about the Morgan Spurlock Associated Press deal. Here's the full press release:
The Associated Press and Morgan Spurlock's production company Warrior Poets have entered into a development deal offering Warrior Poets unlimited access to the extensive resources of AP and its broadcast, digital and mobile assets. This agreement allows Warrior Poets to tap into AP's vast library of award-winning, global content to develop new scripted and unscripted projects across multiple platforms including film, television and digital.
With operations in 110 countries and unrivaled coverage across the 50 states, AP gathers and distributes news in all formats for an array of global customers.
"Warrior Poets recognizes the value of AP's accurate, independent and global text, photo and video news reports," said Michael Dutton, global director of entertainment products at AP. "We are pleased that their experienced and creative team will be developing original digital and broadcast programming around AP's editorial content."
"As filmmakers and TV producers, the opportunity to gain access to AP's impressive portfolio of material is an unbelievable resource. This agreement will allow us to cultivate a multitude of exciting new projects based on AP's countless fascinating news stories," said Morgan Spurlock, Founder, Warrior Poets.
Warrior Poets has produced a number of critically acclaimed documentary films and television series including "One Direction: This Is Us," "POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold," "Comic-Con: Episode IV – A Fan's Hope," "Mansome," "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?," and "Freakonomics." Television projects include the award-winning FX series "30 Days" and CNN's "Morgan Spurlock Inside Man" which premiered its second season on April 13th and has been greenlit for a third season. Currently, Warrior Poets is in production on the new docuseries "Seven Deadly Sins" slated to premiere on Showtime on June 19th.
There are a bunch of really interesting aspects to this. First, why hasn't a movie studio thought to do this? Like I said above, every single day, the AP reporters and photographers are all across the world finding interesting and unique, original stories. I'd bet in one day, they come up with more original stories than Hollywood shepherds in an entire year. It's a near-unfathomable treasure trove of content.
On the other hand, if the Associated Press writes a story about a person, that doesn't necessarily mean they own the rights to that person. Spurlock can't make a Donald Sterling movie today, for example, just because the Associated Press wrote about it. When J.J. Abrams announced his Star Wars cast and the AP wrote about it, Spurlock can't make that a movie. So there are certainly other hoops that must be jumped through after this deal. But still, talk about a great base of content.
What do you think about the Morgan Spurlock Associated Press deal?
Photo credit: CNN