After a previous career in financial consulting for the hospitality industry at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Josh made his foray into entertainment while pursuing his MBA at Columbia Business School. One class in Columbia’s Film School led him to join professor and industry veteran Ira Deutchman as the first employee in Ira's new independent film distribution and digital exhibition company, Emerging Pictures. Ira previously founded the first studio specialty division, Fine Line Features, part of New Line Cinema, and his more than 40 year career has helped define the independent film business.
Josh spent the next decade with Ira at Emerging Pictures, rising to Vice President and growing the company from an ambitious startup to a boutique studio, representing, marketing, and distributing more than 50 feature films. During this tenure, Josh managed and planned the film festival strategy on all titles, working with every major festival in the world (i.e. Sundance, Toronto, Cannes, Berlin, Venice, etc.) in addition to all the second tier and top regional festivals in the US (i.e. Tribeca, SXSW, Los Angeles, New York, etc). He further partnered with the full spectrum of US and world distribution outlets to license rights including Hollywood studios and independent theatrical companies, broadcast networks, video companies, digital portals including giants Netflix, iTunes and Apple, and foreign sales companies. In some cases where Emerging directly handled the US theatrical component, Josh planned and managed the marketing campaigns, supervising a team to book theaters, create trailers and artwork, buy advertising, coordinate publicity and promote via grass roots and social media.
Josh ultimately made his foray into producing during this tenure, starting feature and commercial production company Game 7 Films. Josh ran Game 7 for five years with partners Yaron Schwartzman and Asger Hussain before breaking out on his own to start his latest LA-based sales and production outfit, Jagman Productions. His recent feature production credits include PBS/American Masters documentary By Sidney Lumet on the legendary director; music documentaries Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey (Cinedigm/Independent Lens) and I Want My Name Back (Image/BET) on iconic bands Journey and The Sugarhill Gang, respectively; and Lifetime TV romantic drama Seasons of Love produced alongside Taraji P. Henson and also starring Gladys Knight, Method Man and Letoya Luckett. Josh previously executive produced the IDA nominated Best Documentary, Kassim the Dream, on child soldier turned boxing champion, Kassim Ouma (IFC Films/Sundance Channel/ESPN Films).
Josh is an executive producer on acclaimed South African western Five Fingers for Marseilles, which had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released commercially in the US to critical acclaim by Uncork'd Entertainment in Fall 2018. Josh’s latest scripted project is the USA/China co-production Confetti, a Chinese mother daughter immigrant story starring Zhu Zhu, Amy Irving, Harmonie He, and Helen Slater which was released theatrically in the US in August 2021 by Dada Films and will be released digitally in Spring 2023.
He is executive producing two documentaries currently in development/production: The Great China Baseball Hunt on the search for China’s first MLB player and a documentary on the Negro Baseball League, directed by Sam Pollard and produced alongside Magnolia Films, Radical Media and Questlove's Two One Five Entertainment. He is further executive producing a scripted limited series with Alcon TV on the Negro Baseball League and the first and only woman elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Effa Manley. And he’s executive producing a film adaptation of the Reginald Lewis biography with Charles King's MACRO, the Black List's founder Franklin Leonard, and the Lewis estate, Why Should White Guys Have All The Fun, on Reginald's achievement on Wall Street as the first Black billionaire. Lastly, he is executive producing a scripted narrative on the Journey and Arnel Pineda musical story with Warner Brothers, produced by Jon Chu and Temple Hill's Marty Bowen, and he’s developing projects based on on Brexit whistleblower Shahmir Sanni, Harvey Weinstein survivor and model/activist Ambra Gutierrez, and Archbishop and music icon Carl Bean who sang the Motown's gay anthem 'I Was Born This Way'. Josh has several other documentary, scripted feature, and TV projects in development.
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Josh@jagmanproductions.com