Matthew J. Malek
- Producer
Matthew J. Malek is a 41-year-old film producer hailing from Detroit, MI. He is the co-founder of Foxtail Entertainment, a development, finance, and production company based in Los Angeles. He started in the entertainment industry with the feature film Bella for which he arranged the full financing of the $3 million dollar film which would go on to become the winner of the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. This began Matthew's career in the entertainment business, which would take a significant turn in October 2012 when he started Rush River Entertainment with partner William L. Walton, former head of Allied Capital. Matthew quickly became the lead executive producer on Max Rose, Jerry Lewis' first film since The King of Comedy in 1982. It was an official selection at the 2013 Cannes International Film Festival. This lead him to help structure the deal for Tom Hank's first ever independently financed film, A Hologram for the King, which was released by Lionsgate in May 2016. In the summer of 2014, Matthew fully financed and was the lead producer on the independent film The Ticket with Dan Stevens, Malin Akerman, and Oliver Platt, which world premiered to critical acclaim at the 2016 Tribeca International Film Festival. Everything changed shortly after The Ticket wrapped production when Matthew saw an opportunity to lead a consortium of investors to help make Martin Scorsese's long time passion project a reality, the film adaptation of Silence, the classic Japanese novel which the director had bought 27 years prior. From September 2014 until January 2015 Matthew worked to overcome the immense challenges surrounding the physical production requirements, theological themes posed by the film, as well as devise and execute a financing structure for what would end up a $50-million-dollar independently financed film. As fate would have it, his executive production duties drastically increased when he needed to stay on the film, run of show, to safeguard principle photography in Taiwan from February 5th until the end of May 2015. In February 2016, Matthew co-founded Foxtail Entertainment with a producing partner from Asia to focus on putting strategic capital into high level content development in film, television, VR, and new media, along with the capacity to finance productions and entertainment-related business ventures. With the new outfit Matthew helped structure the deal for and finance To the Bone, veteran TV show-runner Marti Noxon's feature film debut starring Keanu Reeves and Lily Collins, which was bought by Netflix for 8 Million dollars at Sundance 2017. He then immediately went into prep on Assassination Nation, which became a smash hit and the biggest sale at Sundance 2018, purchased by Neon for $10.2 Million Dollars with a wide theatrical release commitment. Matthew was one of the Executive Producers on the thrilling VR experience "Spheres", alongside Jessica Chastain. It was the largest VR sale in festival history and the first 7-figure VR deal ever done, also at Sundance 2018. As, a 3 episode Tour De Force created by director Eliza McNutt, and co-produced by Darren Aronofsky's company Protozoa Pictures' in conjunction with Intel, Oculus and CityLights Entertainment. Matthew is beginning production on the feature film 38, a project he developed and sold to director Deon Taylor's company Hidden Empire. He also has numerous documentaries that are to be slated and released in the coming months. To date, Matthew has facilitated well over $125 million dollars in film and VR/AR investments and deals in his career.