Harbor Fund Courts A-Listers as Lean Successor to Participant
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- Harbor Fund has raised $15 million from 82 donors averaging $250,000 each over two years, deploying $10 million across 22 projects including Chris Pine's documentary "Evicted" and Paramount's "By Any Means."
- Lindsay Hadley rejected the "Participant 2.0" label, saying Harbor will stay under 10 full-time employees because Participant's 100-plus staffers "hemorrhaged capital" before Jeff Skoll shut it down in 2024.
- Sarah Silverman, Zachary Levi, Matthew Modine, Kristen Schaal, Rhys Darby, and Edward James Olmos traveled to Sundance Mountain Resort on June 28 for the invitation-only Harbor Film Forum to pitch projects to handpicked high-net-worth donors.
- Matthew Modine is personally out-of-pocket on "The Splendid Thing" — starring John Cleese, Liam Neeson, Vanessa Redgrave, and Eddie Izzard — and said he will defer his salary to get it made.
- Edward James Olmos pitched "Valley of the Heart," a $41 million Luis Valdez-scripted film about a Japanese-American and Mexican-American love story torn apart by Pearl Harbor, which Olmos plans to direct.
- Kristen Schaal and Rhys Darby pitched "Wool Kings," a New Zealand sheep-station comedy whose script is complete; Schaal said traditional studio channels met the idea with "blank stares."
- Hadley has set a goal of bringing $100 million into Harbor over the next two years; Utah's Office of Economic Development was the Forum's title sponsor, noting the state's film industry has generated over $736 million over the past decade.
Why it matters: After Jeff Skoll shut down Participant in 2024, socially conscious mid-budget films lost their most prominent studio patron — Harbor's VC-style model (capped at 10 employees, no studio overhead) lets A-list talent pitch projects directly to private donors, and a hit on the $100 million target would bankroll dozens more issue-driven projects outside the traditional Hollywood gatekeeping system.
