Dana Brunetti Departs Cavalry Media, Studio He Co-Founded

EXCLUSIVE: Producer Dana Brunetti is leaving Cavalry Media, the film and TV production company he co-launched with former Relativity executive Keegan Rosenberger in 2018.

Deadline has just learned from sources that Brunetti wanted to go out on his own and hang a new shingle. Some of the projects he had in development at Cavalry include the series Motorheads at Amazon Studios and The Devil Within at Epix; he is poised to remain a producer on those if they go forward.

The producer of the $1.3 billion-grossing Fifty Shades of Grey franchise is a producer on the upcoming Sony movie Gran Turismo, from Neill Blomkamp and Sony PlayStation Productions. The pic, which stars David Harbour, Orlando Bloom and Djimon Hounsou, is set for release August 11. Gran Turismo is not a Cavalry Media production. Cavalry Media hasn’t had any greenlit TV or film projects, largely operating in the podcast space with Art Fraud, X Marks the Spot: The Legend of Forrest Fenn, and The Rosenberg Case.

Cavalry Media’s mission was to make moderately priced premium film and TV series for linear and new media platforms. Its movies were to be priced in the range of $40 million-$80 million.

Brunetti ran Kevin Spacey’s Trigger Street Productions, which was acquired by Relativity Media in January 2016 with Brunetti named president. Brunetti departed Relativity that December. During his run with Trigger Street, one of the several projects he executive produced was Netflix’s House of Cards, the series that set aflame the binge-watching streaming era. Brunetti received five Emmy nominations for the series, which itself won seven Emmys. Brunetti was also nominated twice for Best Picture for The Social Network (along with Scott Rudin, Michael De Luca and Cean Chaffin) and Captain Phillips (with Scott Rudin and Michael De Luca).

Amid a plethora of civil lawsuits in California and New Mexico over the fatal shooting of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, Cavalry Media was named today in a suit brought by Gloria Allred on behalf of the D.P’s Ukrainian-based family members Olga Solovey, Anatoli Androsvych and Svetlana Zemko.