Augenschein Scales Up With Stewart, Gere, Hawke Slate
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- Augenschein is scaling to higher-budget Hollywood projects following the success of "Mother Mary" with Anne Hathaway and Michaela Cole, having launched "The Weight" (Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe) onto the festival circuit at Sundance and Berlin.
- "Flesh of the Gods" starring Kristen Stewart and Wagner Moura went into production as a vampire thriller set in 1980s L.A., directed by Panos Cosmatos from an Andrew Kevin Walker screenplay; the film is shooting in Tenerife and Germany with plates in L.A., and A24 pre-bought U.S. rights.
- "Left Seat" starring Michelle Rodriguez and Richard Gere, directed by Ben Younger, wrapped a few weeks ago after shooting entirely in Bavaria; Anton is handling international sales while WME Independent handles North America.
- Germany's revamped film incentives — specifically raising the tax shelter yield to 30% — is what Leo credits with unlocking greenlit productions, with Augenschein now combining the DFFF with regional funds and often preferring Germany over Eastern Europe when they control the IP.
- Augenschein has another star-driven project likely going into production this summer, two more films currently in casting, and "Bloody Tennis" screening to buyers in Cannes — a mix of fully financed smaller titles alongside bigger Hollywood packages.
- The financing market is "slightly less dire" but still highly volatile, per Leo, yet Augenschein's budgets have paradoxically gone up — not down — to attract higher-tier filmmakers, with the spending-based German rebate system making larger budgets more effective at unlocking public funding.
Why it matters: Augenschein is positioning itself as a structural bridge between European soft money and A-list Hollywood talent — Stewart, Hawke, Hathaway, Gere and Crowe all on one slate. The counterintuitive data point buried in the piece: their budgets have gone UP, not down, in a "dire" financing market, because Germany's spending-based rebate means bigger budgets unlock more efficient public funding. Other mid-budget European producers are watching whether this hybrid model can survive volatility.
