Entertainment
14 April 2022
Link copied to clipboardHigher Ground, President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company, has joined Netflix’s Leave the World Behind from director Sam Esmail.
Director/Writer: Sam Esmail
Cast: Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke and Myha'la Herrold
Producers: Sam Esmail and Chad Hamilton through Esmail Corp, Julia Roberts, Lisa Gillan and Marisa Yeres Gill producing through Red Om Films banner
Executive Producers: Higher Ground’s Tonia Davis, Rumaan Alam, Esmail Corp’s Nick Krishnamurth, and Danny Stillman
Logline: A family vacation on Long Island is interrupted by two strangers bearing news of a mysterious blackout. As the threat grows more imminent, both families must decide how best to survive the potential crisis, all while grappling with their own place in this collapsing world.
Suspenseful and provocative, Rumaan Alam’s third novel is keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis.
Since being published in October 2020, the novel has been A Read with Jenna Today Show Pick, a finalist for the 2020 National Book Awards, listed as one of Barack Obama’s Summer Favorites and named A Best Book of the Year from The Washington Post, NPR, Time, Esquire, Elle among others.
ABOUT HIGHER GROUND:
Higher Ground, founded by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, tells powerful stories that entertain, inform, and inspire while elevating new and diverse voices in the entertainment industry. Higher Ground produces film and television exclusively with Netflix, and podcasts exclusively with Spotify. The company’s first film release, American Factory, won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and its first podcast, The Michelle Obama Podcast, is the most listened to Spotify Original to date. Higher Ground’s film releases include Becoming, directed by Nadia Hallgren, the Oscar-nominated documentary, Crip Camp, as well as the presentation of the feature films Fatherhood, starring Kevin Hart, which broke viewing records around the globe, and Worth, a drama that looks at what role government can play in the aftermath of a tragedy, and aims to depict the journey of Ken Feinberg, played by Michael Keaton in the film, and the 9/11 victim families. The company’s television series have received wide acclaim including Our Great National Parks, a docuseries that spotlights some of the planet’s most spectacular national parks; the hit show Waffles + Mochi, which will return to screens this fall; We The People, a groundbreaking short-form series from creator Chris Nee that uses music and animation to teach the basics of rights and citizenship with songs by artists like Janelle Monáe, H.E.R., Adam Lambert, Brandi Carlile and more; as well as two seasons of the widely acclaimed animated series Ada Twist, Scientist.The company produced the hit podcast Renegades: Born in the USA, a series of conversations between President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen and released as a New York Times bestselling book based on the podcast. Higher Ground also released Tell Them, I Am, a podcast collection of universal stories from Muslim voices and The Big Hit Show, a series of audio documentaries hosted by Alex Pappademas that focus on pieces of popular culture that have defined and changed our culture. Upcoming projects include Rustin, a feature film that tells the story of civil rights and gay rights activist Bayard Rustin, directed by George C. Wolfe and starring Colman Domingo in the title role;the feature documentary Descendant, the story of the Clotilda, the last known ship to transport African citizens to the Americas to be enslaved, which was produced by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and received the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Creative Vision at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival; Blackout, a film and TV event adapted from six different love stories; and an untitled comedy series from Regina Hicks.