🎧 Will Packer Finds Audience Where Hollywood Isn't Looking
🎧 Will Packer Finds Audience Where Hollywood Isn't LookingThe producer and Kevin Hart collaborator on facing the fractured attention economy without fear. Plus: A Telluride preview
On Apple Podcasts, subscribe and listen hereProducer Will Packer agrees that his 2017 hit Girls Trip, directed by Malcolm D. Lee, earned a lot of its power from playing in theaters, where audiences could hear each other howling at Jada Pinkett Smith stranded on a zip line over Bourbon Street. But he’s also made his peace with the fact that movies like Girls Trip — big, crowd-pleasing comedies — rarely get theatrical releases anymore. “I can certainly admit there were very successful box office hits 10 years ago that today would only work on a streaming platform, because they’re the types of projects that audiences are now conditioned to consuming in that medium,” the producer tells me on this week’s Prestige Junkie podcast. “I think about it in a positive way: It gives audiences more ways to consume content. It connects us all in a very different way.” Many producers with Packer’s level of success would be hesitant to talk about movies or TV shows as “consuming content,” or happily putting their work alongside user-generated content on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. But ever since breaking into Hollywood with 2007’s Stomp the Yard — a film set at a historically Black college and turned down by virtually every studio — Packer has worked hard to find audiences where they are, specifically ones that the rest of Hollywood might not be trying to find at all. “I don’t fear TikTok,” he tells me. “Content creators, we’re always chasing audiences. You can’t be upset when they are connecting with something that you didn’t create. You just have to figure out what that means for where their tastes are currently.”
Right now Packer is banking on audience attention on Peacock, where his new limited series Fight Night premieres Sept. 5. It’s the latest of his many collaborations with Kevin Hart, who stars in the recreation of the real-life heist that happened in Atlanta in the 1970s while Muhammad Ali made his dramatic return to the boxing ring. It’s a role that’s a significant departure from the comedic persona Hart has developed onscreen since breaking out in the Packer–produced Think Like a Man in 2012. “This is certainly the most dramatic role he has done,” Packer says. “You’re talking about eight episodes, fully immersing himself into a character. Yeah, this is another kind of reintroduction of Kevin Hart and his skill set.” In addition to my conversation with Packer, today’s episode also includes a look ahead to this weekend’s Telluride Film Festival with The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey. If you’ll be lucky enough to be in the mountains too, tell Sean hi! Follow us: X | Facebook | Instagram | Threads ICYMI
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