Amazon MGM Studios has closed a three-year first-look film deal with Jake Gyllenhaal’s Nine Stories following the rousing success of his movie Road House on Prime Video, which was the most watched original movie for the studio ever with 50 million global viewers in the pic’s first two weeks.
Under the actor’s new deal, Amazon MGM will have a first look on narrative features Nine Stories intends to produce for both theatrical and streaming.
Prior to the Doug Liman-directed Road House, Gyllenhaal made the movie Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant with Amazon MGM. The pic was released last year in theaters.
Oscar- and Tony-nominated Gyllenhaal founded Nine Stories in 2015 with Riva Marker, a fully capitalized production company dedicated to working with visionary storytellers in all fields. Most recently, Nine Stories produced Antoine Fuqua’s The Guilty, starring Gyllenhaal, which was Netflix’s No. 1 film for more than three weeks. Nine Stories also produced Wildlife, Paul Dano’s directorial debut starring Carey Mulligan; David Gordon Green’s feature film Stronger, starring Gyllenhaal as Boston Marathon bombing survivor Jeff Bauman; Antonio Campos’ The Devil all the Time for Netflix; Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Joe Bell; Tate Taylor’s Breaking News in Yuba County; and executive produced Hondros, a documentary on war photographer Chris Hondros that won the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival.
For the stage, Nine Stories produced We’re Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time by playwright David Cale. Through Nine Stories, Gyllenhaal served as a producer on Sea Wall/A Life and Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play, which received a total of 12 Tony nominations; both productions received Tony nominations for Best Play in the same year. Marker moved to Linden Entertainment in 2022.
“Jake is a one-of-a-kind talent whose passion and eye for filmmaking makes him a powerful storyteller both in front of the camera and behind the scenes,” said Julie Rapaport, head of film production and development at Amazon MGM Studios. “Following the record-breaking success of Road House, we could not imagine a better time to officially cement our relationship. Jake has been an incredible partner, and we look forward to collaborating with him and the Nine Stories team to create needle-moving and compelling films from visionary filmmakers.”
Said Gyllenhaal: “I’ve worked with Amazon MGM on two films this past year, and they’ve been a wonderful partner both times. Their dedication to filmmaking is contagious, and I so admire their commitment to fans all over the world. I am thrilled to formalize what is an already fruitful collaboration—especially on the heels of Road House‘s outstanding debut.”
