Sugar23 And ACE Content Board Jared Drake & Steven Siig’s Documentary ‘Buried’; Rocket Science To Handle Sales

EXCLUSIVE: Sugar23 and ACE Content have come aboard Jared Drake & Steven Siig’s award-winning documentary Buried as executive producers, with Rocket Science signing on to handle domestic and international sales.

The film follows a California community’s effort to heal, after being confronted with a shared trauma on March 31st, 1982, when a large avalanche hit the ski resort Alpine Meadows and killed seven. Academy Award-winning producer Evan Hayes of Ace Content (Free Solo) joined Oscar winner Michael Sugar (Spotlight) and eight-time Emmy nominee David Hillman (The Tipping Point) of Sugar23 in screening the film prior to its premiere on the festival circuit and immediately signed on to spearhead its sale and release.

The producers have spent the last four months working with Jared and Siig to lock picture, and are looking to release it next year—timed to the 40th anniversary of the Alpine Meadows tragedy. Additional exec producers on the project include Mark Gogolewski and Shannon Houchins.

Buried made its world premiere at the Austin Film Festival in October and won its Jury Award, subsequently claiming Bend Film Festival’s award for Best Documentary Feature, the Boulder International Film Festival’s Silver Medal Audience Award and the Audience Choice Award at Telluride’s MountainFilm Festival.

“This is grassroots filmmaking at its heart, which is exactly why we decided to lend our support. The film is the embodiment of the “Little Engine that Could” and has touched the hearts of everyone who has had an opportunity to screen it, and it deserves to be seen by the widest audience possible,” said Hayes and Hillman in a joint statement. “Additionally, the filmmakers both reside in Alpine Meadows, the site of the deadly avalanche, and call many of the subjects in the movie friends and neighbors – and we want to honor the victims’ memories & support that community as well.”

Sugar23 is a management and production company founded by Sugar in 2017 which most recently produced Apple TV+’s critically acclaimed series Dickinson and the Netflix film Worth, starring Michael Keaton and Stanley Tucci. The company has a first-look film deal and an overall television deal with Netflix, and has dozens of television and film projects in development. It also recently launched an in-house podcast studio and the imprint Sugar23 Books, and has teamed up with experiential agency Blue Revolver to bring new virtual event technology to market.

ACE Content is an award-winning production company founded in 2015 which has produced award-winning features including Free Solo, The Way I See It and Becoming Cousteau, along with series including Maggie and Avec Eric. The company currently boasts a slate of upcoming projects with creatives including Kerry Washington, Jimmy Chin & E. Chai Vasarhelyi, Matt Reeves, Laura Dern, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeff Orlowski, Dawn Porter, Dan Lindsay & TJ Martin, Stacy Peralta, Octavia Spencer and Prentice Penny.