Jessica Chastain's Freckle Films Hires Kelly Carmichael To Head Production

EXCLUSIVE: Kelly Carmichael, the former production exec at The Weinstein Company and Miramax and co-founder of indie film and TV production company 375 Pictures, has been hired as president of production and development at Jessica Chastain‘s Freckle Films. In her new role she will oversee the New York-based production and development company’s original slate with a focus on nurturing and supporting female talent across all aspects of production.

Carmichael is right now overseeing production on Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s The Current War starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon and Untouchables starring Bryan Cranston. Both of those pics are at The Weinstein Company, which inked a first-look deal with her 375 Pictures last year. While at the Weinstein companies her exec producer credits included My Week With Marilyn and Rob Marshall’s Nine.

She most recently was head of production at Ivanhoe Pictures and there spearheaded the acquisition of Crazy Rich Asians now set up at Warner Bros. She also is attached to produce Julian Fellowes’ The Chaperone.

Chastain launched Freckle Films in February 2016 which came with a first-look overhead deal with Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray’s Maven Pictures. Among the projects in the works from that partnership is The Magician’s Lie by Greer Macallister, being adapted by Mr. Holmes scribe Jeffrey Hatcher, about a renowned female illusionist who must clear her name when she’s accused of murder; and Life And Other Near Death Experiences, based on the book by Camilla Pagan, being adapted by Laura Terruso (Hello My Name Is Doris) with Patricia Riggen (The 33) attached to direct. That one centers on a newly single woman whose husband has come out of the closet receives an aggressive cancer diagnosis and heads to the Caribbean in an attempt to rediscover herself.

Other projects at Freckle include Loving Frank, Nancy Horan’s bestseller that tells the story of the remarkable and scandalous love affair between Mamah Borthwick Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright, and a project based on the true story of the Black Mambas, an all-female anti-poaching unit in South Africa.