Madison Wells Balances Art, Commerce and Audience Demands as Gigi Pritzker’s Banner Backs Movies, TV Shows, Live Events and More

On today’s episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast, Madison Wells Media chief Gigi Pritzker and newly appointed president and chief content officer Dan Steinman discuss how the well-positioned indie navigates the ups and downs of a transforming marketplace. “We have to be smarter,” Pritzker says. “Even inexpensive movies are expensive,” says Steinman.

Pritzker explains why she recruited Steinman at this moment as the company looks to have bigger presence in international film sales. Steinman is an alum of Black Bear Pictures and a former CAA agent.

“The opportunity with Dan was to bring someone in who had an enormous amount of experience and expertise in distribution, exhibition, finance — understanding those mechanics. It is in order to increase our output to the extent that it makes sense for the kinds of things that we do,” Pritzker says. “The goal isn’t necessarily suddenly we’re going to be doing X number of films a year. We’re still the same DNA of the company we’ve always been, and the content that attracts us and what we want to engage with didn’t change and won’t change. But Dan’s experience and expertise is going to help us increase the shots on goal and have a bigger opportunity set for us to engage in content across the board.”

Steinman says the priority for companies the size of Madison Wells is to make sure they know exactly who the target audience is for everything that they produce or support.

“It really has never been easy in my experience. And so we have to respond to the uneasiness, taking into account this particular way in which it’s not easy. We have to do the thing that I think indies generally have to do, if they want to have a shot of being profitable,” he says. Producers have to decide “what do we want to make? But also be attuned to the market and the culture. We’re not in a vacuum. We’re not writing sonnets. Even inexpensive movies are expensive.”

“Strictly Business” is Variety’s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. (Please click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.) New episodes debut every Wednesday and can be downloaded at Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud and more.