Netflix Picks Up Sundance Award Winning Docu ‘Giving Voice’

Netflix has secured the right to Giving Voice, the James D. Stern and Fernando Villena-directed documentary which earned the Festival Favorite Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The pic, which will be released in the streamer later this year, surrounds a new generation of performers and follows the emotional journey of six students as they advance through the high-stakes August Wilson Monologue Competition, an event that highlights the work of one of America’s preeminent playwrights. The national event brings Wilson’s work to public school students pursuing careers in the performance arts. The students who commit to the demanding and rewarding competition process are encouraged to explore themselves and the world around them through the monologues from Wilson’s century cycle of ten plays focused on the Black experience in America.

It also features an original song, Never Break, performed by John Legend and written Legend, Nasri Atweh, Benjamin Hudson McIldowie, and Greg Wells. Endeavor Content, which handled the sale, financed the project with Pilgrim Media Group and Impact Partners. Stern, Karen Bove, Villena, Schoen Smith, and Craig Piligian are the producers

Executive Producers are Viola Davis and Julius Tennon for JuVee Productions, Legend, Mike Jackson and Ty Stiklorius for Get Lifted Film Co.; Dan Cogan, Jenny Raskin and Geralyn White Dreyfous for Impact Partners, Gretchen Stockdale and Nicholas Caprio for Pilgrim Media Group, and Constanza Romero.

Netflix also has a feature adaptation to Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom coming out later this year with Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo and Michael Potts starring. Denzel Washington, Todd Black, and Dany Wolf produced.