Spotlight Events feature conversations with high-profile film and television industry professionals who share helpful advice and insights on their career experiences and creative process.
Join Sundance Collab for a conversation with acclaimed filmmakers and creators from Duplass Brothers Productions, Mark Duplass and Mel Eslyn, as they discuss reshaping the television landscape with an indie approach. Their series Penelope was independently produced and was acquired for distribution by Netflix. Moderated by Jandiz Estrada Cardoso, Director of the Sundance Institute Episodic Program, the filmmakers talk about their journey making the series outside of the studio system and provide insights for emerging TV writers hoping to do the same.
Penelope follows a restless teenager questioning her place in the world who embarks on a soul-searching journey into the remote wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. The pilot episode premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. It is available on Netflix.
ABOUT DUPLASS BROTHERS PRODUCTIONS
Under their banner Duplass Brothers Productions (DBP), award-winning filmmakers Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass and Mel Eslyn create original projects for film, television, and digital media. In television, DBP is under a first-look deal with HBO which has yielded the hit series Room 104, Togetherness, and the HBO animated series Animals. Most recently they produced HBO's award winning show Somebody Somewhere, starring Bridget Everett which was named an AFI TV Program of the Year in its first season and won a Peabody Award in its second.
In film, Mark and Jay first gained recognition in the early 2000’s for writing, directing and producing several acclaimed independent and studio films, including The Puffy Chair, Baghead, Cyrus, and Jeff, Who Lives at Home. The teams' numerous feature film credits in the decades following have included The One I Love, Tangerine, Safety Not Guaranteed, Creep (1 & 2), The Overnight, 7 Days, Outside In, Language Lessons and The Skeleton Twins. Last year DBP released Eslyn's feature directorial debut Biosphere starring Sterling K. Brown alongside Mark, to much acclaim.
The team frequently collaborates with the documentary filmmaker Sam Jones', most recently on his HBO features Tony Hawk: Until The Wheels Fall Off for which they won the Producers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Sports Program, and Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed. They also produced the award-winning documentary Not Going Quietly, which follows the activist and lawyer Ady Barkan as he embarks on a national campaign for healthcare reform. Their most recent documentary Last Stop Larrimah aired on HBO in the states and on Netflix internationally.
DBP is also active in the docuseries television space, best known for producing Netflix’s Wild Wild Country, winner of the Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series in 2018. Additionally, the team produced the critically acclaimed series The Lady and the Dale on HBO, Hulu's Sasquatch, HBO's On Tour with Asperger's Are Us and Netflix’s Evil Genius. Their latest Netflix series American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders debuted at #3 in the U.S. top 10 TV list.
Most recently Eslyn and Mark co-created the series Penelope, which premiered at 2024's Sundance Film Festival before premiering on Netflix US on September 24. Other upcoming releases include Morrisa Maltz's Jazzy which they produced with Lily Gladstone, Nnamdi Asomugha's The Knife, Hulu's Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal, the third season of HBO's Somebody Somewhere, and The Creep Tapes, the latest installment in their Creep franchise.
