Mike Fleming

TORONTO, Sept. 13, 2012 – HBO Documentary Films has acquired the U.S. television rights to Tom Donahue’s feature documentary film CASTING BY, it was announced today. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday evening to an enthusiastic crowd and will next be screened at the New York Film Festival.

Produced by Kate Lacey, Tom Donahue, Ilan Arboleda & Joanna Colbert, CASTING BY puts the spotlight on filmmaking’s unsung heroes – the casting director – and takes us on a fast-paced journey through the last half-century of Hollywood history from an entirely new perspective. Casting pioneers like Marion Dougherty and Lynn Stalmaster were iconoclasts whose exquisite taste and gut instincts helped change the old studio system and usher in the New Hollywood with movies like “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Graduate,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Bonnie and Clyde.” Afforded the unprecedented freedom and power of the new medium of television, they broke away from the traditional typecasting of Hollywood and brought a new kind of leading man and leading lady to the screen, as in actors like James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Bette Midler, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, et al.

Tom Donahue combines personal narratives from countless actors and directors including Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Jeff Bridges, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Lane, Jon Voight, Bette Midler and John Travolta, with extensive archival material to reconstruct the untold tale of Hollywood’s most invisible and unheralded profession.

“The creation of CASTING BY was a collaborative process made in the spirit of the late Marion Dougherty to recognize these unsung heroes. We could not be more excited to have found the perfect home for our film at HBO,” said Donahue.

Josh Braun of Submarine negotiated the CASTING BY deal on behalf of the producers – Genmaicha, CreativeChaos vmg and Our8s, with HBO.