Tom McCarthy’s Slow Pony Strikes First-Look Film Deal With Concordia

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-winning filmmaker Tom McCarthy‘s production company Slow Pony has inked an exclusive first-look film deal with Concordia Studio, the talent-first studio whose most recent production, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, world premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and will bow on Apple TV+ on May 12.

McCarthy comes to the deal after numerous successful collaborations with Concordia co-founder Jonathan King, who exec produced his Best Picture Oscar winner Spotlight during his tenure as President of Narrative Film and Television at Participant. King also produced McCarthy’s recent Cannes-premiering Matt Damon starrer Stillwater for Focus Features, as well as his 2007 drama The Visitor, which brought Richard Jenkins his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.

The filmmaker will look to build out a diverse slate of features under the Concordia deal, all of which will be in the narrative space, helping the studio to expand in that area after launching its work in scripted during the pandemic. Slow Pony’s Director of Development and Production Rae Baron, who co-produces McCathy’s Hilary Swank-led ABC series Alaska Daily, will maintain the same role and responsibilities under the Concordia deal.

“I have a long history of collaborating with Jonathan King. I trust his brain and his taste implicitly,” McCarthy said in a statement to Deadline. “We are thrilled to be furthering our creative partnership along with Concordia. We believe in Jonathan and Concordia’s vision; with Emerson [Collective]’s backing we have a unique opportunity to look to the future and create an exciting slate of films.”

“At Concordia, we seek to collaborate with artists like Tom McCarthy whose movies always have something provocative on their minds and deeply human in their hearts,” added King. “I’m incredibly excited to launch this partnership with Tom and Slow Pony as we build our next slate of projects together.”

McCarthy is a renowned writer, director, producer and actor whose most recent film, Stillwater, had Damon playing an Oklahoma father who travels to France to help his estranged daughter (Abigail Breslin), who is in prison for a murder she claims she didn’t commit. His best-known feature, Spotlight, examining the Boston Globe‘s investigation into child sex abuse taking place within a local Catholic Archdiocese, notched six Oscar noms in total, with McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer also landing the prize for Best Original Screenplay.

Other past films from McCarthy include Disney+’s Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, based on the children’s books by Stephan Pastis; Searchlight’s wrestling dramedy Win Win with Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan; and The Station Agent, starring Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson and Michelle Williams, for which he received a BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay.

In addition to creating and exec producing Alaska Daily, McCarthy has exec produced Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why and Showtime’s The Loudest Voice. He co-wrote Disney’s Christopher Robin and also contributed to the story of Disney/Pixar’s Best Animated Feature Oscar winner Up.

As an actor, McCarthy has appeared in such films as Flags of Our Fathers, Syriana, Good Night, and Good Luck and Meet the Parents, along with the final season of HBO’s The Wire and many other projects.

Founded by Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) and King, in partnership with Laurene Powell Jobs and Emerson Collective, Concordia Studio formally launched in 2020 to produce narrative and nonfiction content for film and TV.

While the company produced the Mahershala Ali-led Apple sci-fi drama Swan Song and is working with Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante (La Llorona) on his next feature Rita, it’s best known so far for producing such renowned documentaries as Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s 2022 Oscar winner Summer of Soul, Robert Greene’s 2022 Academy-shortlisted and Peabody-nominated Procession; Peter Nicks’ Cinema Eye Honors and IDA Award winner Homeroom; Maisie Crow’s At the Ready; and Emelie Mahdavian’s Bitterbrush, among others.

Other upcoming projects for the company on the documentary side, in addition to Still, include the Apple TV+ series The Happenings, looking at The Enfield Poltergeist of 1977 and the horror films it inspired, as well as an untitled effort about the Navajo Nation Police Department.

McCarthy is represented by Gersh and Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.