"Precious," a raw movie about an obese black teen growing up in an abusive Harlem household, got off the ground with some unlikely angels: A wealthy Denver couple new to the film business.
The surprise success of the movie marks a vindication for Sarah Siegel-Magness and her husband, Gary Magness, a pair of novice film investors who put up roughly $12 million to finance a project that wouldn't appeal to Hollywood studios.
"No way, no studio would make a film about an overweight black girl," says "Precious" director Lee Daniels, who produced "Monster's Ball," which won Halle Berry an Oscar.
The 36-year-old Ms. Siegel-Magness runs her own clothing company called So Low, which began with an underwear line for low-rise jeans. Her parents started the tea company Celestial Seasonings, where she worked growing up. Mr. Magness, 55, whose parents began the cable company Tele-Communications Inc. that later merged with AT&T, is a cattle rancher and oversees an investment group.
Their foray into film financing and producing wasn't part of a carefully planned strategy. "When I began to get outside counseling from Hollywood about what we had done, people were mortified," remembers Ms. Siegel-Magness. "They told us we should have instead invested in this or that fund to make 11 different movies, that we were crazy for financing an African-American movie about incest," she says.
In today's cash-starved Hollywood, where the billions Wall Street poured into Hollywood between 2004 and 2008 have dried up, individual "angel" investors like the Magnesses are more crucial than ever—and one of the only ways that gritty, independent films like "Precious" ever live to see the silver screen.
"Liquidity has dried up in a big way, and those big financing deals are gone for the moment, says Premila Hoon, who previously ran film financing at Société Générale and now has her own boutique film investment advisory firm, Entertainment Capital Advisors. "I think we will see more angel investors, and they will be a little smarter about risk."
Credits: The Wall Street Journal
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