Bryn Mooser Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Addie Morfoot Contributor As the SAG-AFTRA strike gets underway, documentary filmmakers are still at work. But despite the fact that the dual strike by actors and their writer counterparts in the WGA could lead to gaps in narrative content for broadcast networks and streaming companies, the doc industry isn’t holding out much hope that studios will start flooding money into documentaries. “There’s a feeling of solidarity and support for SAG and for the WGA,” says Bryn Mooser, founder of nonfiction film and television studio XTR. “The struggle they are facing is a struggle that doc filmmakers have also faced since the beginning of the industry on the documentary side, which is fair pay and making sure we are represented in the right way, et cetera. But if anybody thought that this would mean that (studios) will just shift resources to a different part of the industry like docs while this gets figured out, that’s not happening.”

Natasha Lyonne and Bryn Mooser pose for photos together while attending the 2024 Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday (January 7) in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Olivia Wilde is spending some time with longtime collaborator Bryn Mooser.

EXCLUSIVE: Documentary+, the ad-supported streaming platform launched by Bryn Mooser’s XTR, is moving into distribution.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia is the latest high-net-worth individual to get involved in the documentary business. As a producer on Waad Al-Kateab’s “We Dare to Dream,” about the refugee Olympic team at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Gebbia not only helped fund the project, he also played an active role in the film’s pre-production, production, and edit. “We Dare to Dream” is Al-Kateab’s second feature docu. In her first film, “For Sama,” which was nominated for an Academy Award, the Syrian director used her camera to capture her daily life during the siege of Aleppo.Gebbia produced “We Dare to Dream” alongside Violet Films’ Joanna Natasegara (“Virunga”) and Abigail Anketell-Jones (“The Edge of Democracy”) and XTR’s Bryn Mooser and Kathryn Everett. Angelina Jolie recently signed on as an executive producer on the project. Gebbia joins fellow philanthropists Laurene Powell Jobs (Concordia Studio), Jeff Skoll (Participant Media) and Jim Swartz (Impact Partners) in the docu investment business.

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Sports Documentaries has picked up North American TV and streaming rights to the sports documentary The Lionheart, directed and produced by Laura Brownson (The Rachel Divide), ahead of its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival. No word on a release date yet.

EXCLUSIVE: The docuseries based on The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome podcast is moving a step closer to fruition.

Naman Ramachandran New York-based film and TV studio and streaming network FilmRise has acquired North American distribution rights to true-crime documentary feature film “The Thief Collector.” Directed by Emmy winner Allison Otto (“The Love Bugs”), the film follows one of the most audacious and puzzling art thefts of a generation. In 1985, Willem de Kooning’s seminal work, “Woman-Ochre,” was sliced from its frame and stolen off the walls of the University of Arizona Museum of Art, disappearing into the desert. Over 30 years later, in a remote town in New Mexico, the $160 million dollar painting was rediscovered in the unlikeliest of places – the home of an eccentric married couple, both schoolteachers, with a keen eye for great works but a very unconventional method of collecting them. The film features Glenn Howerton co-creator, director, writer and star of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

EXCLUSIVE: Documentary+, the free streaming service launched by non-fiction studio XTR, has launched its latest slate of original feature docs.

EXCLUSIVE: Vertical Entertainment has secured North American, United Kingdom, and Ireland distribution rights to Broadway Rising, Amy Rice’s documentary chronicling the reopening of Broadway after the 2020 Covid pandemic shutdown.

Menudo: Forever Young,” the HBO Max docuseries about the titular Latin American boy band, has been released.Directed by filmmakers Angel Manuel Soto and Kristofer Ríos, the four-part docuseries follows the rise of Menudo, a Puerto Rican musical group formed in 1977 by producer Edgardo Díaz that became one of the most popular boy bands in history, selling 20 million records worldwide during the 1980s. The series chronicles the group’s meteoric rise in the ’80s, and the fall it suffered during the ’90s, after sexual abuse allegations against Díaz surfaced.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaDocumentary studio XTR and Crooked Highways are teaming up on “Merch!”The upcoming documentary will look at the origin and impact of music merchandise through the stories of pivotal musicians, designers, fans, and entrepreneurs who helped commodify artists. The non-fiction feature will trace the history of these products, starting with the first Elvis Presley concert t-shirt.

XTR has launched production on Role Players, which is billed as the definitive documentary on the seminal fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons.

A “Dungeons and Dragons” documentary is on the way from global documentary studio XTR. Titled “Role Players,” the film is described as the “definitive” documentary on the seminal fantasy game and is currently in production.Using never-before-seen archival footage and interviews with high-profile celebrity D&D fanatics, “Role Players”will tell the all encompassing story of Dungeons & Dragons.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorXTR, the award-winning nonfiction company behind “They Call Me Magic” on Apple TV Plus and the Oscar-nominated “Ascension,” announced its acquisition of a 30,000 square-foot studio located off Sunset Boulevard in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, just west of downtown.The new XTR Studios space includes production and post-production facilities, a sound stage, recording studio and offices. The acquisition represents a key milestone for the documentary industry as audience growth and business catch up to narrative.“This is an incredible time for documentaries where there is more demand than ever before.

HBO Max will release Menudo: Forever Young, a new documentary about the Latin American boy band from filmmakers Angel Manuel Soto (Charm City Kings) and Kristofer Ríos (Havana Skate Days), on June 23. The premiere will follow the project’s debut at the 2022 Tribeca Festival on June 11.

CAA’s annual pre-Oscars party is back and lots of celebs stepped out to celebrate!

Documentary+, the free streaming service launched by non-fiction studio XTR, is getting into the original programming and has ordered its first project.

Wyatte Grantham-Philips editor“Free Chol Soo Lee” has been acquired by global distributor, streamer and production company MUBI.The documentary, which premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival, will come to U.S. theaters in 2022, with release plans in other territories (Latin America, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey, the U.K.

EXCLUSIVE: There’s a boom in collectible sports trading cards – from the $4.6M paid for a Luka Doncic rookie card or the $5.2M for a 1952 Mickey Mantle card as well as a recent deal that valued card brand Topps at $1.3B

On a sunny afternoon in L.A., Bryn Mooser, CEO of XTR, folds his long frame into a patio chair perched above the headquarters of his growing documentary company. His green eyes scan the hilly enclaves of Silver Lake and Los Feliz, spotting landmarks: the Griffith Observatory in the distance, Hyperion Avenue below.

The IOC Refugee Olympic Team competing in the Tokyo Olympics is set to be the subject of a feature documentary from For Sama director Waad Al-Kateab.

Magic Johnson and Diane Warren. The film is currently in production and will be both directed and produced by Lowen.

Diane Warren is getting the documentary treatment, courtesy of XTR.

Peter White Television EditorEXCLUSIVE: XTR, the non-fiction studio behind films including wrestling doc You Cannot Kill David Arquette and the upcoming Magic Johnson feature doc, has secured a multi-million dollar investment from former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.The company, which was set up by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and RYOT co-founder Bryn Mooser, has secured $17.5M and will allocate money for its own production slate, as a finishing fund to complete titles from doc filmmakers and for

Peter White Television EditorEXCLUSIVE: XTR, the non-fiction studio behind the upcoming Magic Johnson feature doc, is launching its own streaming platform.The company, set up by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and RYOT co-founder Bryn Mooser, is launching Documentary Plus+ later this year.The producer, which is also behind wrestling doc You Cannot Kill David Arquette, is hoping that the service becomes a Criterion Collection for docs.

Also Read: ESPN Orders 'Last Dance'-Style Docu-series on Tom BradyThe documentary will also explore Johnson’s legacy as a businessman and how he achieved success as the chairman and CEO of Magic Johnson Enterprises and on his leadership within the black community as one of the most influential sports figures ever.“In these unprecedented times we need films that celebrate heroes more than ever,” Bryn Mooser, XTR CEO, said in a statement.

By Peter White

By Peter White

By Peter White

Documentary features have been increasingly been earning big praise and even bigger price tags out of the Sundance Film Festival, and nonfiction studio XTR Films is hoping to ride the fest’s doc boom.The Echo Park based company is led by Bryn Mooser— the Oscar-nominated co-founder of documentary-focused media company RYOT— and is heading to its first Sundance after a September 2019 launch, announcing their feature slate that will be debuting in Park City.Mucho Mucho Amor,The Fight, Us Kids and