EXCLUSIVE: Canadian powerhouse Elevation Pictures is pushing into documentary pre-sales and has lined up projects about the Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco and the Jackson Family.
The Toronto-based distributor-producer, which has 16 films in TIFF selection including Saturday’s world premiere of I Play Rocky directed by Peter Farrelly, is in talks with “significant” partners on the Blanco project and is pulling together the financing.
The story will be told from the perspective of Michael Corleone Blanco and use previously-unseen interviews with the only surviving son of the crime boss who dominated the Miami drug trade over several decades and was shot dead in 2012.
“We want to step in on documentaries with compelling IP or something with personality that people can understand in a sentence,” said Elevation president Noah Segal.
The Jackson Family feature will use previously-unseen footage and interviews with the late Michael Jackson’s brothers. Elevation serves as executive producer and is helping to pull the project together with unnamed partners.
The company dipped its toes into documentary sales on current TIFF selections Neil Peart: No One’s Disciple in Special Presentations, which it made with Banger Films and sold to CBC in Canada and Paramount’s Republic Pictures for international; and Run Terry Run, about the beloved Canadian charity fundraiser that has a press and market screening on Sunday before the public Gala Presentations screening on September 19.
Elevation is partnering on pre-sales on Sean Menard’s Run Terry Run with Double Agent, the Dana O’Keefe-run joint venture between New Regency and Elevation’s majority investor Black Bear.
“The way that Sean’s put together this doc is brilliant,” said Segal. “We’re going wide in Canada theatrically in October and we took on world rights because we felt like we need to zhuzh it up for the world market. You have to present that movie in a certain way so that people can appreciate it outside of Canada. The first step is showcasing it at a Canadian festival with a lot of international press and I can’t imagine a better launch pad than TIFF.”
Segal, who heads Elevation Pictures following the recent amicable departure of co-founder Laurie May, is ramping up production at the company and intends to make three to four features a year. “We want to be about quality, not quantity,” he said.
The company is preparing a UK shoot in early 2027 on Jordan Tannahill’s Canadian-UK medieval horror Rapture, and just delivered the sci-fi and recent Fantasia selection Freaks: Part II to Paramount from Final Destination: Bloodlines duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein. Hulu acquired Ally Pankiw’s documentary Lilith Fair for the US.
Elevation is also pushing into scripted television and is close to greenlighting a new project expected to be announced soon.
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