New York, NY – May 7, 2020 – AMC Studios announced today that it has entered into separate exclusive, multi-year overall deals with Rolin Jones (Friday Night Lights, Weeds), Gina Mingacci (Killing Eve, Orphan Black) and Ray McKinnon (Rectify, Deadwood) to develop and produce new series for AMC Networks’ Entertainment Group as well as other content companies. The deals expand AMC Networks’ ongoing or previous creative partnerships with Jones, Mingacci and McKinnon.
“Our writers and producers are the center of everything we do and achieve, and I could not be happier to welcome (back) this massively talented triumvirate to AMC Networks,” said Sarah Barnett, president of AMC Networks’ Entertainment Group and AMC Studios. “Rolin, Gina and Ray are exceptional. I look forward to making incredible television with these brilliant humans, all of whom are incapable of doing anything that isn’t something special.”
“If AMC was a body part, they’d be Carlos Vela’s left foot,” said Jones. “For the next two years I hope to be their sock, shin guard, and cleat. Grateful and excited to be in servitude to the excellent team they’ve assembled.”
“Sarah and her team are some of the gutsiest, most creatively driven and passionate execs out there and they are never afraid to take risks, especially with fresh voices and emerging talent,” said Mingacci. “I feel lucky to continue my relationship with them in this new, exciting way.”
“As it is a little late for me to realistically consider a career change, I am beyond excited (just below manic) to be getting back into the ‘making up stuff’ business with Sarah Barnett and all the folks at AMC,” said McKinnon. “They embraced my particular slant once before with Rectify which played no small part in my decision (and hopefully theirs) to have another go. It’s near impossible to collaborate with someone who doesn’t really get what you’re going for. Sarah did and does and that’s hard to put a value on. I feel very fortunate. Given the times we’re in, it is hard not to be moved, inspired, and appalled into picking up the pen again. I can only hope for a full well.”
Jones was the co-creator/showrunner of HBO’s upcoming Perry Mason and the season one executive producer/showrunner of The Exorcist for Fox. He has written and produced for Friday Night Lights, Weeds and Boardwalk Empire. His Friday Night Lights episode, “The Son,” received an Emmy® Award nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series and was named by Time magazine as the best episode of television for the year 2010. His award-winning musical collaboration with Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, These Paper Bullets!, received its 2014 world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre and was later produced at the Geffen Playhouse and Atlantic Theater Company. His play The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow received the OBIE Award for Excellence in Playwriting and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. He is the co-founder of New Neighborhood, a multi-discipline arts collective that has commissioned, developed and produced award-winning television, theater, music, film and dance work. His new production shingle, Dwight Street Book Club, a television, podcasting and beautifications company, is currently producing the podcast Ask Ronna with Ronna (& Bryan) and the upcoming interactive dining experience Feast: Every Year I Grow Again.
Mingacci joined Sid Gentle Films Ltd. as executive producer in June 2018, where she works across Sid’s television and film slate and currently serves as executive producer on seasons two, three and four of the Emmy®-nominated and Golden Globe®-nominated Killing Eve. Prior to joining Sid Gentle Films Ltd., Mingacci was BBC AMERICA’s senior vice president, scripted programming, where she oversaw a development team and slate of both domestic and international drama series. Notable among her projects there are the final two seasons of Emmy® Award-winning series Orphan Black, and the critically-acclaimed first season of Killing Eve, written and executive produced by BAFTA award- winner Phoebe Waller-Bridge and starring Golden Globe® winner Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer. Before joining BBCA, Mingacci was the head of scripted television at Superb Entertainment, where she developed and sold both comedy and drama scripted series to HBO, Fox, Media Rights Capital, Lifetime and Lionsgate. A graduate of New York University’s prestigious Cinema Studies program, she began her career in the publicity department at TriStar Pictures in New York before becoming a development executive at Woods Entertainment/Miramax Films where she worked on such notable films as Beautiful Girls, Citizen Ruth, Copland, Kids, Scream and Swingers. As president of production at New York-based Independent Pictures, she oversaw the development and production of a slate of films including Harmony Korine’s Gummo and Julien Donkey Boy starring filmmaker Werner Herzog as well as The Prime Gig starring Vince Vaughn and Ed Harris. She also worked with acclaimed filmmakers such as Academy Award® winner Alexander Payne, Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, cult photographer Larry Clark and Tony® Award winner Gregory Mosher.
For McKinnon, “storyteller” is probably the most apt moniker for this actor, writer, director, producer and retired carpet cleaner. Perhaps most notably he is known for creating and showrunning SundanceTV’s critically acclaimed Rectify, which received a Peabody Award in 2015, landed two Critics Choice TV Award nominations in 2015 and 2016, and has been on many of its decade’s “Top Ten Best Show’s” and “Best Of” lists. As a filmmaker, McKinnon’s debut, The Accountant, won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short in 2002, which he wrote, directed, and played the titular role, in collaboration with Lisa Blount and Walton Goggins. Their next film (a feature), Chrystal, starred all three along with Billy Bob Thornton, and was written and directed by McKinnon. It was selected for Sundance Film Festival’s prestigious Dramatic Film Competition in 2004. In 2009, McKinnon produced and acted in That Evening Sun, which garnered him an Independent Spirit Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his role opposite Hal Holbrook. As an actor, McKinnon has accumulated an array of (arguably) unforgettable and offbeat characters. His impressive film resume includes James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari (opposite Matt Damon and Christian Bale), Mud, Footloose, Take Shelter, The Blind Side, O Brother, Where Out Thou, Apollo 13 and Bugsy. His soon-to-be-released movies are Paul Greengrass’ News of the World starring Tom Hanks and Doug Liman’s Chaos Walking. In TV he’s known for roles on the award-winning HBO series Deadwood as Reverend H.W. Smith and FX’s critically acclaimed Sons of Anarchy, Mayans M.C., and Fear the Walking Dead. He has also appeared in multiple series ranging from NYPD Blue, The X-Files, Matlock, as well as having an old film clip on Jeopardy.
Jones is represented by Tara Kole of Gang, Tyre, Ramer, & Brown, Inc and Larry Shuman of the Shuman Company.
Link to headshots HERE
###
About AMC Studios
AMC Studios is the in-house studio, production and distribution operation for AMC Networks Inc. AMC Studios’ first series, The Walking Dead, is the highest-rated series in cable history. Since then, AMC Studios has produced several critically acclaimed, award-winning and culturally distinctive originals for AMC including scripted series Fear the Walking Dead; The Terror anthology, Lodge 49, NOS4A2 and the upcoming Dispatches From Elsewhere, Soulmates, 61st Street and Kevin Can F**k Himself, as well as unscripted series: Ride with Norman Reedus, James Cameron’s Story Of Science Fiction, Eli Roth’s History of Horror and Hip Hop: The Songs that Shook America. The Studio has also produced for SundanceTV the Peabody Award-winning Rectify, original series Hap and Leonard, as well as the unscripted true crime franchise including Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders and The Preppy Murder: Death in Central Park.