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If the YA drama “Sterling Point” has become your new hyper-fixation show, you’re not alone. Amazon reports that the coming-of-age series, from creator Megan Park, was the most-watched show on Prime Video worldwide since
its Aug. 5 debut.
“Sterling Point” centers on 17-year-old Annie Jacobson (Ella Rubin, best known for “The Idea of You”), who was raised in New York City with her twin brother (Keen Ruffalo) by her adoptive father (Jay Duplass). But when the twins’ grandfather dies and they inherit his picturesque island, Annie sets out for Muskoka, Canada, to learn more. What, or who, she finds is Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle), a standoffish girl who looks just like Annie’s late mother and insists Gordon was also her granddad. The series unfolds over a sun-drenched summer as the two young women develop a sisterly bond while navigating all sorts of drama in the romance department (It wouldn’t be a YA series if there wasn’t at least one love triangle!) and more family secrets are revealed.
Variety’s review was a rave, with TV critic Aramide Tinubu pointing out how “Sterling Point” offers something “wholly unique and wistfully authentic” to the YA genre — populated by such hits as “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” “Off Campus” and “Every Year After” on the same streamer. What sets this show apart, Tinubu writes, is the depth of its exploration into themes of “grief, self-discovery and being brave enough to face the past.”
The success of “Sterling Point” doesn’t surprise the team behind it as much as it delights them.
“We made this show for audiences, so to have audiences begin to engage with and hopefully gravitate toward the things that were really important to us in the telling of it, and to see themselves reflected in the storytelling and the characters,” executive producer Dani Gorin tells Variety over Zoom. “That’s what it’s all about.”
Gorin leads the TV division at LuckyChap, the company behind “Wuthering Heights,” “Promising Young Woman,” “I, Tonya” and the $1.4 billion-grossing blockbuster, “Barbie.” LuckyChap also produced Park’s second feature, “My Old Ass,” which was where their professional love affair with the filmmaker (who began her career as a teen star on shows like “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”) and the Canadian island of Muskoka (where Park spent summers growing up) began.
The “repeat business” with Park is just one of the elements that makes “Sterling Point” the epitome of a LuckyChap show. The company has been in the TV business since 2019, launching with the Hulu comedy “Dollface,” then going on to produce acclaimed limited series like Netflix’s “Maid.”
This time last year, Gorin was gearing up for the launch of “Sirens” — their second series with creator “Maid” creator Molly Smith Metzler — and visiting the set of “Sterling Point,” which featured “The O.C.” and “Gossip Girl” alums Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage as co-showrunners.
“Being in Muskoka with everyone — the cast, the crew — it’s such a special place, and it does have like a camp sort of feel,” Gorin recalls. “We had days where we would be shooting on the water, and you’d be jet-skiing over to a camera boat, and you’re like, ‘This is work?’”
But for all the fun in the sun, Gorin and her six-person team were simultaneously working on their next few shows. “We were getting ready to start the writers’ room on ‘Life is Strange’ in London, and we were working on the pilot script for ‘Sex Criminals,’” she says. “And we were starting to think about ‘Retrievals,’ which is our next show with [Metzler].”
Louie Hayes, who oversaw the day-to-day on “Sterling Point,” is now focused on “Sex Criminals,” the live-action adaptation of the popular comic book series written by Matt Fraction and illustrated by Chip Zdarsky for Amazon. Imogen Poots will star as Suze, a “normal girl with an extraordinary ability: when she has sex, she stops time.” One night, the logline explains, Suze meets Jon (John Reynolds), who has the same gift. “And so they do what any other sex having, time stopping couple would do: they rob banks.”
Kumail Nanjiani, Emily V. Gordon and Tze Chun developed the series, produced by LuckyChap and Winter Coat Films, with Nia DaCosta directing multiple episodes and joining the team as an executive producer.
“What I love about ‘Sex Criminals’ is how specific it feels to the people making it,” writes Hayes in an email from the New York set. “Building off what Matt and Chip created in the comic, Emily, Kumail, and Tze are taking this big, provocative, high-concept idea and making something only they could make — a show that’s funny, idiosyncratic, and ambitious with an enormous amount of heart. It’s such a surprising way into something so romantic and life-affirming.”
Meanwhile, Natalie Berkus is across the country in Vancouver for production on “Life Is Strange,” a sci-fi mystery drama, based on the hit video game. The series follows photography student Max Caulfield (newcomer Tatum Grace Hopkins), who gains the ability to rewind time while saving her best friend, Chloe Price (Maisy Stella). Max and Chloe then work together to explore the town of Arcadia Bay and solve the disappearance of Chloe’s friend, Rachel Amber (Esther McGregor).
Charlie Covell will serve as showrunner for the series, which is a co-production between LuckyChap, Square Enix, Story Kitchen and Amazon MGM Studios. Karyn Kusama will direct the first two episodes and executive produce.
“What I love about ‘Life is Strange’ is that it’s a big and operatic idea based on beloved IP, but the thematic foundation of the show that Charlie has so brilliantly crafted is rooted entirely in the emotional truths of the characters,” Berkus says. “It’s a really exciting foray into opening up the aperture of our brand and challenging ourselves to explore new types of stories and worlds while always coming back to the authenticity of our artists and what they want to tell.”
Gorin also notes that “Life is Strange” is a game where, unlike most, 50% of the audience who plays it are women.
“If you’ve played Life is Strange, it really does lend itself to this sort of long-form storytelling. That’s such a unique and exciting challenge for us. It’s something that we did with Barbie,” We feel there’s a big opportunity there if the source material is treated with that sort of reverence and care,” she says. “Everyone who’s part of making the show is a fan of the game. There are so many Easter eggs and little nods that the eagle-eyed fans are going to be so excited about.”
Casting Stella in the lead role is also an Easter egg of sorts, and it proves that “repeat business” extends to all the company’s creative relationships, not just filmmakers.
“Megan is such a superstar with casting. It is one of her superpowers,” Gorin says. “I don’t know if she gets enough credit for this, but Megan helped break Jenna Ortega in ‘The Fallout’ and Stella in ‘My Old Ass,’ and I think this cast that she has assembled for ‘Sterling Point’ really are the next generation of big stars.”
Like Stella, LuckyChap is keeping star Emilia Jones on their talent roster after she starred in their upcoming film “Bad Bridget,” opposite Alison Oliver. News broke Thursday that Jones will star in “Retrievals,” the Netflix limited series, based on the New York Times and Serial Productions podcast of the same name.
Per the logline, the show follows an “unlikely community of IVF patients who come together to crusade against Yale University after they are operated on without anesthesia — because a nurse stole their fentanyl.” Jones will play Gabby Clemente, described as “a New Haven bartender and student teacher whose life is upended by her traumatic egg retrieval surgery. Upon discovering that a nurse at the clinic was stealing vast amounts of fentanyl, Gabby seeks out other victims and leads a groundbreaking legal battle.”
The opportunity to work with Metzler again was at the top of the LuckyChap team’s list of reasons to produce the series, but there’s also a more meaningful aftereffect.
“It’s an opportunity to shine a light on a really insidious systemic failure in the medical space, which is the way that women’s pain is routinely dismissed and ignored, and the standard of care is different for women,” Gorin says about the storyline. “It’s a really hard thing to talk about and to showcase, and the podcast did that so brilliantly.”
She continues: “The opportunity to tell stories that can have an impact is such a privilege. It’s something ‘Maid’ did as it related to what domestic violence could look like. We never are issue driven for the sake of it. But when we’re able to move the conversation in and around those sorts of things, it’s really meaningful.”
Considering all these different genres, one might wonder, what makes something a LuckyChap show?
“Part of what makes the brand so strong is that there is a shared vision across film and TV: it really comes down to supporting artists and their vision,” Gorin says. “Our brand definitely is about female stories and/or storytellers, but that works across genres.”
Another key factor is that the idea feels truly authored. “That is something that helps cut through for an audience because you can feel that you can feel a voice, you can feel a point of view,” she says. “Only this person could have done this in this way; it’s so very much in their voice, which I think is rare in television, actually, just given what the medium is and how it’s typically made.”
The final ingredient is finding fresh stories that feel “a little bit left of center” tonally. Gorin explains that they aim to produce projects “that have something to say but aren’t being didactic in the way that we’re saying it and aren’t force-feeding an audience a message, but rather, engaging in a dialogue with them and giving them things to chew on and sit with.”
“Sterling Point” hasn’t officially been renewed by Amazon yet, but rest assured that Park and LuckyChap are invested in telling more of this story. In fact, the show represents the company’s first step toward more ongoing series after enjoying success making limited series.
“It is a different calculus than building a limited series,” Gorin says, but creating series that could continue for multiple seasons was a big priority for her team. “’Sterling Point,’ ‘Sex Criminals’ and ‘Life is Strange’ are meant to be ongoing. There’s a lot in the pipeline.”
Another point of pride is that all those shows have female filmmakers at the center: from Park with “Sterling Point” and Nicole Kassell with “Sirens” to DaCosta (“Sex Criminals”), Kusama (“Life is Strange”) and Lila Neugebauer (“Retrievals”). “It very much represents the ethos of the company,” Gorin says.
With so many projects in the works, what could the LuckyChap team possibly do next?
“We are really interested in and excited by the music space and feel like there’s a big opportunity there in television,” Gorin says, teasing that the company is developing a mystery project with a “musical component.”
“I’m Glad My Mom Died,” based on Jennette McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, is still in development at Apple TV. Plus, LuckyChap is working on a family drama, which is a project close to Gorin’s heart.
“’Six Feet Under’ was my absolute favorite show, and probably the reason I work in television,” she says. “It’s something I’ve never done and the company’s never done, and that’s definitely a big target for us.”
So, as the old TV saying goes, “Tune in next week.” It probably won’t be the same time or the same channel, but for LuckyChap, the same success feels inevitable.
