The Obamas’ Production Company Might Be Here To Save Us All

Barack and Michelle Obama might not be in the White House anymore, but they’re still having a huge impact.

After starting production company Higher Ground Productions, and signing a deal with Netflix 11 months ago, they have released a whole roster of shows they’ve been working on that are coming to Netflix soon.

‘Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and the Higher Ground team are building a company focused on storytelling that exemplifies their core values,’ said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer of Netflix.

‘The breadth of their initial slate across series, film, documentary and family programming shows their commitment to diverse creators and unique voices that will resonate with our members around the world.’

There’s a clear focus on education among the projects the Obamas have coming up; including a documentary about American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and ‘Crip Camp’, which tells the of a summer camp for disabled teenagers.

Among the sea of TV shows and films on Netflix which use an algorithm to predict what users want to watch, and then create those shows, the projects the Obamas are backing will make a refreshing change from the same old storylines.

Here’s the full list of what’s coming up from the Obamas on Netflix.

American Factory was acquired by Netflix in association with Higher Ground Productions out of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Directing Award: U.S. Documentary. The film is a portrait of post-industrial Ohio, where a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant and hires two thousand blue-collar Americans. The producers are Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert, Jeff Reichert, and Julie Parker Benello. It will be the first release from the Higher Ground slate.

Bloom is billed as an upstairs/downstairs drama series set in the world of fashion in post-WWII New York City that depicts barriers faced by women and by people of colour. It is written and executive produced Callie Khouri. Higher Ground Productions, Khouri, Virgo and Maio will executive produce the series.

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, a feature film adaptation of author David W. Blight’s biopic, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History.

Overlooked, adapted from The New York Times’ obituary column Overlooked, and telling the stories of remarkable people whose deaths were not reported by the newspaper. Higher Ground is developing Overlooked as a scripted anthology series with producers Liza Chasin of 3dot Productions and Joy Gorman Wettels of Anonymous Content.

Listen To Your Vegetables & Eat Your Parents is a half-hour preschool series from creators Jeremy Konner (Drunk History) and Erika Thormahlen. The show will take young children and their families around the globe on an adventure that tells the story of our food.

The Fifth Risk, a non-fiction series based on author Michael Lewis’s (The Big Short, Moneyball) book about crucial, often life-or-death, work done by officials in government agencies.

Crip Camp, a feature-length documentary film that’s in production and is supported by the Sundance Institute and was acquired earlier this year by Higher Ground and Netflix. It’s the story of a summer camp for disabled teenagers in the 1970s that helped to set in motion the disability rights movement. The film is directed by former camper Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham. Producers include Newnham, LeBrecht and Sara Bolder, with executive producer Howard Gertler.

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