EXCLUSIVE: LVMH has launched 22 Montaigne Entertainment, a platform to percolate film, TV and audio format productions for its portfolio of 75+ luxury brands. Named for the address of LVMH’s Paris headquarters, 22 Montaigne has been created in partnership with Superconnector Studios. Co-founders Jae Goodman and John Kaplan will work with LVMH North America Chairman/CEO Anish Melwani to find the right match between its brands, and creators, producers and distributors. LVMH will co-develop, co-produce and co-finance these entertainment properties.
There is a relatively unmined treasure trove here with brands that go back to the 14th Century. The brands represented here are cream of the crop, including Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Guerlain, Kenzo, Marc Jacobs, Tiffany & Co, Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Krug, Dom Pérignon, Maison Ruinart, Le Bon Marché, Bulgari, TAG Heuer, and Séphora.
“At LVMH, we view each Maison as a house of stories, a distinct creator of culture,” Melwani said. “We embrace the belief that these narratives are meant to be experienced rather than simply told, and our goal is to further leverage premium entertainment as a means to share the richness of these tales with our customers.”
The intersection between high-end fashion brands and Hollywood has been an enduring one. The Ridley Scott-directed House of Gucci was a passion of Scott’s wife and lead producer Giannina Facio, and entry into the brand’s compelling and provocative story was made easier by the involvement of Salma Hayek, who played a major role in the film, and whose husband Francois Henri-Pinault’s company controls the Gucci brand. The French billionaire subsequently completed a $7 billion acquisition of the majority of leading talent agency CAA, with both citing the compatibility of the businesses. Documentaries are made on major fashion brands. To hear Melwani tell it, it was just time for LVMH to become more proactive on behalf of its house brands, which he calls “Maison’s.”
“It’s more of an evolution than anything,” Melwani told Deadline, “because luxury and entertainment have been connected for a long time. Both are about culture. I’ve been in this job now eight years, and early on I was on my flight back from Paris on Air France, and I watched a documentary called Dior and I, about Raf Simmons’ first couture collection at Christian Dior Couture. It was a great piece, all about the creative process, but obviously it was done through the lens of fashion and Dior specifically. Over the years, there’s been a number of projects that have come across my desk somewhat randomly.”
Those included overtures for designers that might be interested in participating in books and docus, and films on the likes of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot, the Grand Dame of Champagne, whose compelling life was captured in the Tilar J Mazzeo book The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It. Another production company was interested in a documentary on Tiffany & Co.
“They had no idea of how to get hold of the folks at Tiffany’s,” Melwani said. “It happened that someone that they knew used to work for one of our brands, and happened to have my email address, got me an email, and I just happened to read that one. And then we got them connected to the house. So this is something where, there is a demand out there. We were doing stuff and we’ve done stuff in the past, but we weren’t organized. This is planting a flag and saying, we actually are interested in the right entertainment projects that fit with the brand values of the Maison that is involved. This is not something we’re going to do a lot at the corporate level. Our brands are the ones that have the DNA and the heritage and the stories to tell. But to the extent that there are great storytellers in the entertainment business, who are interested to tell stories that are connected to each Maison, we want to make it a little easier for them to find us. Entertainment storytelling is a different Métier, a different skill than what we are good at. We’re great at telling stories through product, through marketing, through events like the Dior Museum in Paris; we brought an exhibit to the Brooklyn Museum last year.
“We are great at that kind of storytelling where we can bring the history and DNA to life, but that’s a different skill than entertainment storytelling, whether that’s through movies, documentaries, podcasts, video,” he said. “The way great things happen is, you create the conditions for serendipity. So to the extent that we know that we have these amazing stories in the DNA of our Maison’s, they’re there and they’re part of the IP, part of the heritage. How do we create more chances for that great material to meet the great storytellers of this and future generations and let serendipity happen?”
He isn’t kidding about the Maison mythology; many of them have their own archivists, steeped in brand history. Taking an active role, and even bringing co-financing to the table will ensure brands have a say, while leaving the creative to the filmmakers. The recent collaboration between estate, filmmakers and Paramount Pictures on Bob Marley: One Love is an example where it can go right. The film’s authenticity was boosted by the presence of the Marley family and the late singer’s confidantes on set, including members of The Wailers. Fueled by Marley’s signature reggae hits, the film far outpaced tracking, grossing over $52M domestic and $81M worldwide on President’s Day weekend, with overseas markets still rolling out. Some of that quality control will fall on the Superconnector founders who met at CAA and have deep experience connecting brands with entertainment opportunities, such as Nike’s Waffle Iron Entertainment teaming with Brad Weston’s Makeready in an Apple Original Films first look deal.
“They will field the things that come in,,” Melwani said. “I’ve spent a little bit of time [in Hollywood], I’ve met with a number of studios, and it was remarkable the number of projects that were already in flight that weren’t looking for money. What they wanted was to enhance the authenticity. Some didn’t realize that the brand that they were talking about was part of our portfolio because when you have 75 Maison’s, not everyone follows it. And we don’t do a great job of publicizing what’s under the umbrella. Even if they did know, they just didn’t know how to get hold of us. [Goodman and Kaplan] are insiders to the industry, so they’ll help us understand the [possibilities for] our brands, which are premium and luxury and prestige. The entertainment content has to match up with those base values. They’ll help figure out the right alignment of values and thinking with our Maison’s. And then to the extent that our Maison’s have stories that they would love to get told, that exist in our archives or in our heritage, helping to figure out the right studios to talk to. You don’t want to just cast it out into the universe.”
The ability for LVMH to selectively use its own money brings further flexibility.
“On the financing side, we see this as being mostly relatively early in the development cycle because, going back to my point about serendipity, we could of course just pay to have a piece made, have a documentary made exactly the way we want it,” Melwani said. “But we’re not great documentary storytellers. That’s not what we’re good at. So the odds of that leading to a great documentary that tons of people want to see aren’t that high. We really want to let the market work, try to create the opportunity where there are great authentic stories told by great storytellers. If then there’s the money to finance it and then distribute it, that’s the best indication it’s actually a great piece of work. So this isn’t LVMH coming to Hollywood with a big checkbook to say, we’re going to go make movies. That’s not the intention.
“What we are really bringing is access to our IP, a place for great storytellers interested in that level of authenticity,” Melwani said. “LVMH is a very strange organization compared to any other organization I’ve ever worked with, in the sense that our Maison’s compete with each other and we work very hard to keep their identities independent, and we give them a lot of autonomy. So 22 Montaigne Entertainment is going to be an organizing vehicle to get projects from great storytellers to the right Maison. All the creative decisions, even the decision to participate or not, will stay with our Maisons because we incentivize them and we structure it so that they are the keepers of their Maison’s DNA and heritage and IP. It’s very hard for me to tell you what this will look like in 10 years, because it really depends on how this works. This is a bit of an experiment. We did model it on what Nike did with Waffle Iron Productions. Because of the diversity of our portfolio, we could be doing podcasts about great female creatives in fashion, or be involved in a documentary about the champagne region and how it’s evolved. There could be a scripted series involving one of our hospitality properties. I don’t really see it as ever being a consumer brand. This is not like a Miramax or Fox Searchlight where it’s going to be a genre that consumers recognize. It’s really a B2B brand, for the industry to know that if you have something that touches our portfolio and you’re wondering how to get ahold of us, there you go.
“I’m actually not sure we are the best ones to judge what the best yarns are because we love our brands, and if I brought you to one of our Maison’s and you sat for an hour with the CEO, or even better the archivist, because most of our brands have an archivist…forget an hour, you’d spend a whole day and they’ll tell you a million stories. But what stories are truly compelling for a modern audience? That’s the storyteller’s Métier. We’re not going to be prescriptive and come to market with, ‘here’s five stories that we think are great and we think you guys should want to tell.’ Rather, we’ll say, ‘Hey, this is who we are and what our brands are, because, they’re certainly well known.”
For their part, the Superconnector duo said: “We’d be inspired just to learn that LVMH has decided to expand the creativity and cultural influence of its Maisons through entertainment. We’re honored and thrilled they’ve chosen to create 22 Montaigne Entertainment with us. We are so ready to share [its] mission and vision with Hollywood, then work alongside leading storytellers and the Maisons to share our prestige film, TV and audio with the world.”