EXCLUSIVE: Dallas Sonnier and Jack Heller’s Caliber Media has quietly phased out the majority of its management business and closed its Wilshire Boulevard office as the company and its principals shift focus almost completely toward production. The transition began late this summer, when Caliber’s clients and small staff got word of the impending changeover, and Sonnier and Heller started making calls to help their managers find new homes. Word started circulating in recent weeks as Caliber reps started landing elsewhere around town.
Now headquartered in its New York City office and postproduction hub, the company established in 2008 will focus primarily on producing and financing features like the upcoming horror-Western Bone Tomahawk, starring Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox and Richard Jenkins. Sonnier and Heller are producers on the project, which recently wrapped production in California.
Sonnier will continue to manage a few clients, including Bone Tomahawk writer-director S. Craig Zahler. Meanwhile, Heller has been ramping up his directing career with ads for brands like British Knights, Beats by Dre, and Pac Sun and music videos featuring Big Sean and Miley Cyrus. He directed the Lionsgate-distributed feature Enter Nowhere in 2012 and premiered the Kevin Durand-starring horror thriller Dark Was The Night last month at ScreamFest. The film also has screened at The Film Society of Lincoln Center.
“Jack and I are proud of our efforts building the management business, but with the amount of time we spent on film sets this year as producers, and with Jack’s emerging directing career, we felt it was a good moment to pivot in our focus,” Sonnier said. “After making Bone Tomahawk, S. Craig Zahler and I are likely attached for life, and I’ll go to the grave representing folks like him.”
Caliber revved up its production biz in 2011 by backing a number of action flicks starring “Stone Cold” Steve Austin before branching out with varied indie genre fare. They’re currently in post on the NYC-set horror Condemned, starring Dylan Penn, and Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Some Kind Of Hate, starring Noah Segan, Sierra McCormick, and Grace Phipps. Expect more Caliber reps to resurface in new gigs soon.
Jen Yamato
