Docs’ New Selling Point: Celebrity EPs

Cherien Dabis knew she wanted to bring more attention to her film, and for that, she needed star power. Her Sundance drama, All That’s Left of You — Jordan’s Oscar submission for best international feature this year — chronicles multiple generations of a displaced Palestinian family. But amid heated debates in the U.S. over the Israel-Gaza war, the director and actor felt her project was being overlooked. Enter Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem.

On Sept. 24, the A-listers, established supporters of the Palestinian cause, formally joined the feature as executive producers. In their roles, they’re expected to do media for the film, host screenings and post on social media. “We always knew [this] had to be the strategy in order to give this type of film the best chance at this moment,” says Dabis.

It’s just the latest example of a long tradition in Hollywood. From Charlie Chaplin donning a Hitler-esque uniform to send up fascism in 1940’s The Great Dictator to Jane Fonda’s endeavor to channel the women’s movement in 1980’s 9 to 5, stars have leveraged their celebrity and charisma to amplify social or political issues they care about.

Today, one path for them to do so is to take on a supportive, even hype-mannish role as an executive producer on films and documentaries tackling societal problems.

This year alone, Sarah Jessica Parker is executive producing a doc on librarians fighting book banning, The Librarians, which her production company joined during its search for funding. Sean Penn is EP-ing the Brazilian and Portuguese film Manas, about the exploitation of women in an island community. Debra Messing joined the antisemitism documentary October 8. And The Voice of Hind Rajab, set during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip, added a glut of A-listers as EPs before its Venice Film Festival premiere: Brad Pitt, Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Jonathan Glazer and Alfonso Cuarón.

These partnerships have become increasingly important as major Hollywood distributors shy away from titles they consider potentially controversial, partisan or uncommercial because they tackle societal concerns.

“In a climate where human rights and social issues are under threat, we need these methods,” argues director-producer Joanna Natasegara (Virunga), who has worked with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Angelina Jolie as EPs on documentary projects.

The calculus for filmmakers is simple: Famous EPs can bring funding, distribution interest, media coverage and social media attention to titles that might not otherwise get institutional support or sound very sexy to the viewer (see The Need to Grow or Kiss the Ground, two star-backed docs about soil health).

From the point of view of the famous, some stars feel particularly impassioned about certain issues. But partnering with a documentary or scripted project is also a way to solidify their activist bonafides.

“I think this offers a ton of reciprocal benefits for the celebrity in terms of strengthening their brand, in terms of reinforcing their own advocacy positions,” says Woodbury University professor and media arts department chair Kristen Fuhs, who wrote a book chapter on the EP roles that actors Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau played on the 2021 animated documentary Flee.

As EPs, celebrities might do anything from simply slapping their name on a poster to glad-handing for an awards campaign to getting deeply involved in production. They might volunteer their time or be paid for their labor, depending on their deal.

These EPs have become increasingly valuable in recent years. The struggles of scripted films like The Apprentice and The Voice of Hind Rajab to land U.S. distribution have been well-documented, while traditional documentary distributors continue to favor films about celebrities, sports and true crime instead of potentially sensitive projects.

Josh Braun, a sales agent for many top docs, says he “absolutely” encourages adding a star to a film if they can bring something to the table beyond name recognition. “It can be valuable and reassuring to the distributor to know that someone who has a bigger voice that people will pay attention to can help call attention to the film and potentially be part of the marketing,” Braun says.

Still, these efforts can backfire if a well-known person doesn’t end up fulfilling promotion commitments, he notes. And at a time when consumers are savvy to celebrity marketing in all its forms, any involvement that doesn’t feel “authentic” can ring of virtue-signaling or, worse, a project attempting to drum up attention because it may not stand on its own merits.

“You have to think really carefully about whether it is a match that makes sense,” says John Lewis: Good Trouble director Dawn Porter, who has worked on a number of films about racial justice issues and politics.

And in this hyperpolarized moment, there can be a bit of risk for the celebrity, too, say directors Abbie Perrault and Maisie Crow. Their 2024 abortion-bans doc, Zurawski v Texas, was incubated at Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s banner, HiddenLight, and it brought on Jennifer Lawrence as an executive producer after she saw a cut of the film.

The filmmakers are grateful that they had “outspoken, non-nonsense” public figures with “a huge tolerance for taking criticism and still speaking their minds” behind the film, Perrault says.

Crow adds, “Frankly, in this world that we’re living in, I applaud them for putting their names on films like this [and] any celebrity with a platform for standing behind a social issue or a story they care about. I am sure there is fear around doing it.”