| Company type | Film & TV Production Company |
|---|---|
| Founded | Boston, Massachusetts, United States (1994) |
Key people | Michael Williams, Principal and Co-Owner David Collins, Principal and Co-Owner Rob Eric, Chief Creative Officer |
| Products | Film & Television Production |
Scout Productions [1] is a film and television production company owned by Michael Williams and David Collins. David Collins created the groundbreaking television series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy , [2] which revolutionized reality television and the Bravo Network. Queer Eye aired in 120 countries and included 19 international formats. It made its mark critically and on the cultural landscape, winning an Emmy, a PGA Award, and two GLAAD Media Awards. In January 2017, it was announced Netflix and Scout were producing a reimagining of the series with an all new Fab Five. The new show premiered in February 2018 to positive reviews and launched the Netflix foray into original unscripted series.
Other series Scout has produced include Home Made Simple on OWN, Big Ideas for a Small Planet , Sox Appeal , Sordid Lives: The Series , First Person . Films include the Oscar winning documentary The Fog of War (2003) and Transsiberian (2008). [3]
Michael Williams and David Collins founded the company in 1994 focusing on independent features, including Never Met Picasso (1996), Home Before Dark (1997), Six Ways To Sunday (1998), Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999), and Session 9 (2001). In 2003, they created their breakout hit, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and company principal Michael Williams won the Academy Award with Errol Morris for the 2003 documentary film The Fog of War .
Scout Productions has been responsible for the following television series:
Film credits:
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
Queer Eye is an American reality television series that premiered on the Bravo network in July 2003, initially broadcast as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The series was created by executive producers David Collins and Michael Williams along with David Metzler through their company, Scout Productions. Each episode features a team of gay professionals in the fields of fashion, personal grooming, interior design, entertaining, and culture collectively known as the "Fab Five" performing a makeover : revamping wardrobe, redecorating, and offering lifestyle advice.
World of Wonder Productions is an American production company founded in 1991 by filmmakers Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey. Based in Los Angeles, California, the company specializes in documentary television and film productions with a key focus on LGBTQ topics. Together, Barbato and Bailey have produced programming through World of Wonder for HBO, Bravo, HGTV, Showtime, BBC, Netflix, MTV and VH1, with credits including the Million Dollar Listing docuseries, RuPaul's Drag Race, and the documentary films The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000) and Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016).
Peter Mortimer is an Emmy-winning American filmmaker from Colorado. He is best known for being the creator of the Reel Rock Film Tour, as well as the director of feature documentaries The Alpinist, The Dawn Wall and Valley Uprising. He has produced and directed multiple films related to rock climbing, mountaineering, and outdoor adventure under the production group Sender Films.
Michael Williams is an American producer. He won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara in 2004. He also won an Emmy Award in 2004 for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which he created. Queer Eye was rebooted in 2018, for which Williams won five consecutive Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Structured Reality Program. He is co-owner and principal of Scout Productions, a film and television production company based in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from the School of Communications at Boston University. In 1979, Williams began his career as a location scout for Spenser for Hire, which filmed in Boston.
Sox Appeal is a reality television series that aired on NESN in 2007 and 2008. It was a Boston Red Sox-themed dating game show that followed a fan during three, two-inning long blind dates that took place over the course of a Red Sox game. During the seventh inning stretch, the fan chose the date they wanted to continue dating. The date, however, could choose not to continue the date.
Diane Frolov is an American television writer and producer. She has written for several television shows, including The Sopranos and Northern Exposure. She frequently co-writes episodes with her husband, Andrew Schneider.
Michael Bacon is an American singer-songwriter, musician and film score composer. He is the older brother of actor Kevin Bacon. He is a faculty member in music at Lehman College.
Lauren Lazin is an American filmmaker whose documentaries have been nominated for the Emmys multiple times. She directed and produced the 2005 Oscar-nominated documentary film Tupac: Resurrection.
Karen Schmeer was a film editor who frequently collaborated with filmmaker Errol Morris.
Robert Lloyd Lewis is an American television and film producer. He has worked as a producer on the Showtime drama series Dexter since 2006 and has received multiple award nominations for his work on the series.
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an American documentary filmmaker. She was the director, along with her husband, Jimmy Chin, for the film Free Solo, which won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film profiled Alex Honnold and his free solo climb of El Capitan in June 2017. Their first scripted film venture was Nyad - a biopic chronicling Diana Nyad's quest to be the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida.
Laura Ricciardi is an American filmmaker. Ricciardi is best known for the Netflix documentary television series Making a Murderer, which she cocreated with filmmaker Moira Demos. Along with Demos, Ricciardi served as executive producer, writer and director for all 20 episodes of the series. At the 68th Annual Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in 2016, Making a Murderer received ix nominations and won Emmy Awards for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series, Outstanding Writing for a Nonfiction Program, and Outstanding Directing for a Nonfiction Program.
David Collins is an American television and film producer. He is best known for creating the reality television series Queer Eye.
Bonni Cohen is an American documentary film producer and director. She is the co-founder of Actual Films and has produced and directed an array of award-winning films. Most recently, she produced the Oscar-nominated film Lead Me Home, which premiered at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival and is a Netflix Original. She also recently co-directed Athlete A, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Documentary and received four nominations from the Critics’ Choice Awards. She is the co-founder of Actual Films, the production company of the documentaries An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Audrie & Daisy, 3.5 Minutes, The Island President, Lost Boys of Sudan and The Rape of Europa. Cohen is the co-founder of the Catapult Film Fund.
Jon Shenk is an Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary film director and director of photography, known for his films Lead Me HomeAthlete A, An Inconvenient Sequel, Audrie & Daisy,The Island President, Lost Boys of Sudan. He is the co-founder, with his wife Bonni Cohen, of Actual Films, a documentary film company based in San Francisco, CA. He co-directed and photographed Lead Me Home which premiered in 2021 at the Telluride Film Festival, was acquired by Netflix, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2022.
