According to Blake Griffin, he and Ryan Kalil have a simple mission at Mortal Media, the production company they founded in 2016: to make things people will actually want to watch. “There are so many mandates, so many algorithms in today’s streaming and entertainment environment,” Griffin said during a panel with Fast Company at CES this week. “And we always come back to that initial model we once had: Would we want to watch this?”
In Mortal Media’s case, this mandate has translated into a wide variety of projects. Last year alone, the company released a reboot of White Men Can’t Jump starring Jack Harlow on Hulu; debuted Hello Tomorrow!, a sci-fi comedy starring Billy Crudup, on Apple TV+; and signed a multi-year first-look deal for film and TV with Sony Pictures Entertainment. There’s also a remake of The Rocketeer for Disney, a single-camera comedy series called Get Buckets in development for Fox, and an untitled action comedy for Netflix (produced in conjunction with Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat). Moreover, Mortal led an investment round last summer for Swaybox Studios, whose proprietary animation technology combines elements of stop-motion animation, CGI and live action.
While Griffin is a six-time NBA All-Star and Kalil is a five-time NFL Pro Bowler, a quick survey of Mortal’s portfolio suggests the duo won’t be turning to producing sports content. (Sure, White Men Can’t Jump is about two basketball players, but the movie is more about their relationship than the box score.) It’s entirely intentional that Mortal’s catalog is so anti-genre: In the beginning, “managers, studios, and producers have given us everything under the sun” ” Kalil said. “We were struggling with the stigma of being an athlete and being new to the scene. But we stuck to our guns and stuck to the things we truly love. “And now we have a bunch of projects that we’re working on, and we really feel like we’re going to have a bunch of work that will allow us to play in a bunch of different sandboxes.”
It helps that both men have an obvious passion for the industry. Griffin credits his love of comedy to a childhood full of Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor and Dave Chapelle. “It was about sneaking out of bed and letting my dad let me watch Saturday Night Live with him,” she said. This interest turned pragmatic over the years as Griffin became increasingly involved in the creative process while shooting commercials for the likes of Kia and Google. “I sat down and started helping write,” he said.
In Kalil’s case, his love of film began with Star Wars, more specifically the “behind the scenes” material that appeared on Star Wars VHS tapes. “I remember seeing a lot of Phil Tippett animation and being amazed by it,” he said.
Let’s note that Phil Tippett is the stop-motion pioneer behind Robocop, Piranha and, yes, Star Wars. In other words, the kind of man only a movie buff could name.