Veteran executive Josh McLaughlin is headed to Nine Stories Productions, the company run by actor Jake Gyllenhaal.
McLaughlin most recently worked at his own shingle, Wink Pictures. Before that, he spent ten years at Focus Features, most recently as president of production, with his projects including Spike Lee’s Oscar-winning BlacKkKlansman, filmmaker Kasi Lemmons’s Harriet Tubman feature Harriet, Joe Wright’s Winston Churchill biopic The Darkest Hour and Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Phantom Thread. He also worked with David Leitch on the Charlize Theron action movie Atomic Blonde and Joel Edgerton on Boy Erased, about a young man sent to gay conversion therapy.
He previously worked at Chernin Entertainment and The Mark Gordon Company.
“I am so excited to join the Nine Stories team under Jake’s leadership,” said McLaughlin. “I’m eager to build on the company’s impressive achievements and momentum, and collaborate with talented filmmakers and creatives to deliver compelling content to our trusted partners.”
McLaughlin arrives as Nine Pictures hope to build off its first-look film deal with Amazon MGM Studios, where it made the Gyllenhaal starrer Road House, which has a sequel in development. On the TV side, the company recently released Gyllenhaal’s Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+. The streamer has ordered a second season of the legal thriller.
Said Gyllenhaal of the hire: “We are thrilled to welcome Josh to Nine Stories as President. I greatly admire his wealth of experience and deep industry knowledge, and I look forward to working together to expand our slate of dynamic projects across film, television, and stage.”
