WASHINGTON, July 14 (UPI) -- Robert L. Johnson, the creator of Black Entertainment Television, is forming a film studio with independent producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein.
Our Stories Films will produce family films about African-Americans that will be distributed by the Dimension Films unit of Weinstein Co., The Washington Post reported Friday.
Their funding will come from New York bank J.P. Morgan Chase, which has agreed to raise up to $175 million to fund the company.
"For a long time I've wondered why there was no major movie studio where African-Americans had the green-light authority to make broadly distributed films," Johnson told the Post, adding "The two answers I came up with was black filmmakers have historically had no access to the capital to do it, and there was no one with the business and management capability to make it a going concern. I think we have the answer to both in Our Stories."
