David Fortune's 'Color Book' Lands on Netflix After
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- David Fortune received his first industry break via the Village Roadshow Emerging Talent Program in 2019, which partnered with his alma mater Loyola Marymount University and awarded him a $10,000 grant, eight years after his film school graduation.
- Fortune produced the short "Us" in 2022 through the Ghetto Film School's Netflix Content Creator's Program, receiving $25,000 over six months; Netflix-backed Film Independent's Amplifier Fellowship then provided $30,000 to develop "Color Book" as his first feature.
- AT&T awarded Fortune a $1 million prize in 2024 to shoot "Color Book" and secure a Tribeca Film Festival premiere, after which the film launched on Netflix and in limited theatrical release on June 19.
- "Color Book" follows Lucky (William Catlett), a newly-single father mourning his wife while caring for his son Mason (Mason Hutchinson) with Down Syndrome on a trip to his first Atlanta baseball game, shot entirely in black and white to focus attention on the father-son bond.
- Netflix has backed over 1,000 training programs globally in the past five years, engaging more than 90,000 participants, though the article notes the industry still needs more tangible success stories like Fortune's.
- Fortune told IndieWire he kept returning to incubator programs because "that's where the support was," urging the industry to take notice of filmmakers emerging from these programs rather than treating them as gatekeepers.
Why it matters: Fortune's trajectory — eight years, five different programs, roughly $1.065 million in cumulative grants and prizes — illustrates the slow, patchwork funding pipeline that diverse filmmakers still rely on, while Netflix's 90,000-participant training footprint shows the scale of the industry's incubator bet and the gap between participation counts and actual released films.
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