Inside Anonymous Content’s Comeback: A New CEO, a Controversial Elon Musk Doc and Climate Change Drama ‘A Statement’ Have Hollywood Buzzing

In 2019, Anonymous Content founder Steve Golin died of cancer, plunging the management and production company he established into a prolonged period of uncertainty. Once, Anonymous had loomed large in Hollywood, creating award-winning movies and shows such as “Spotlight,” “The Revenant,” and “Mr. Robot.” But without its leader, the company struggled to chart a new course for itself.

“Steve’s death was a tremendous blow to the company,” said Darren Walker, who joined the company as its new CEO in January, during a recent Zoom interview. “Then there was the compounding effect of the COVID pandemic, and the strikes in 2023 and lots of internal challenges, shall we say. The company absolutely has had a difficult few years.”

But Walker, who came to the company from the world of philanthropy having led the Ford Foundation for 12 years, believes that Anonymous has turned a corner. And there’s plenty of evidence to support his claim. Anonymous is entering the fall festival season with its strongest film slate in years.

At Venice, there’s Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love,” which is South Korea’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards; as well as “Musk,” Alex Gibney’s scathing look at Tesla and SpaceX mogul Elon Musk. Both films will also play in Toronto, alongside “In Waves,” an animated romance about two surfers that premiered to raves in Cannes. And the New York Film Festival will bring “The Statement,” a global warming drama that reunites the company with “Spotlight” director Tom McCarthy. On the television front, this fall will also offer “East of Eden,” Zoe Kazan’s sprawling adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel, which will premiere on Netflix, and Apple TV’s “12 12 12,” a heist drama with Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan.

“There’s just so much momentum around the company now,” Walker said. “Someone I had dinner with the other night, who runs a major agency, told me: ‘You know, it’s amazing how just the buzz in town around Anonymous has changed.'”

Darren Walker, Anonymous Content’s new CEO.

Walker is the first to admit that most of these upcoming films and shows were in the works long before he joined the company, but his hire has given Anonymous something it lacked for years — leadership. After Golin’s death, Anonymous tapped Dawn Olmstead, former president of Universal Content Productions, to serve as its CEO. But Olmstead left the company abruptly in 2023 along with COO Heather McCauley. There were reports that the two had disagreed with the way the company handled its legal settlement with Keith Redmon, a longtime executive who was fired from Anonymous in 2021 and later sued for breach of contract. Walker doesn’t have Olmstead’s background in creating content, but he does have deep industry relationships from his time at the Ford Foundation, one of the world’s wealthiest non-profits and a major supporter of the arts and public media. A New York Times story on Walker’s hire pointedly mentioned his friendships with Hollywood pashas like CAA’s Bryan Lourd, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, along with the Obamas.

“Any organization that has lacked a CEO for three years has a hard time finding its way,” Walker said. “You need a vision. You need inspiration. You need clarity and purpose and a mission that everyone gets around. And I think the last six months have been about building that. And what’s emerged is, Anonymous 3.0, and we’re revving the engine because it’s time for takeoff.”

It also helps that Walker has the support of Laurene Powell Jobs, whose investment firm Emerson Collective is Anonymous’s biggest backer.

“We’re in a position now where Emerson has recommitted to the company, so we have the capital that gives us the confidence to know that we can do bold and courageous things,” Walker said. “That allows us to know we’re in this for the long haul, and that the work we’re doing, supporting great storytelling, is a noble calling.”

The courage could come in handy. Many of Anonymous’s films sound compelling, but they also flirt with controversy. “Musk,” for instance, is on a collision course with a thin-skinned trillionaire with a reputation for being litigious.

“You have to believe that the work that we do is in the public interest,” Walker said. “And we stand by the artists who we work with. That’s the bottom line for us. We can’t we can’t shirk our responsibility to produce films about controversial people because we fear controversy.”

As for the documentary, which reportedly presents a warts-and-all portrait of Musk as a potentially dangerous megalomaniac, Walker promises that there will be plenty of revelations.

“This is an opportunity to work with one of the greatest directors of his generation in Alex Gibney as he unearths and brings us into the world of Elon Musk,” Walker said. “It is elevated, intelligent, deep, very probing and rigorous. Just to be clear, we don’t do a lot of docs at Anonymous. But when we do, they are special and unique, and this is one such example.”

Walker also has high hopes for “A Statement,” an ensemble film that follows the likes of Paul Rudd, Paul Giamatti, and Tatiana Maslany who portray scientists, activists, and policymakers at a conference about the effects of carbon dioxide emissions on the planet.

“It’s a profound meditation on the challenge of climate change and the difficulty of resolving these existential questions of our day,” Walker said. “The cast is great, the setting is great, and the dialogue is directly from the transcripts of this very important meeting that took place in 1980. It is authentic and gritty and personal. It’s a brilliant movie that is both moving and depressing and exciting all at the same time.”