Andrew Rosen has a lot on his plate. As the co-owner of a Toronto media production company, he and his business partner Anthony Leo currently have multiple projects on the go, including one with heavyweight executive producer Angelina Jolie.
Rosen and Leo started Aircraft Pictures 10 years ago and have continuously developed and produced scripted television shows and movies across traditional and digital platforms.
“We just say now we’re creating content for the screen, it doesn’t matter what screen you’re really watching it on,” he says, knowing audiences find content in a variety of ways. Yet, he doesn’t want to simply churn out products. Rather, he strives to take on projects that he’d like to watch, and that he’d want to show his kids.
Their first animated feature film The Breadwinner, based on the eponymous book by Canadian author Deborah Ellis, is starting production. It tells the story of a young Afghan girl living under Taliban rule. And it’s also the one with Jolie at the helm.
As an international co-production between Canada, Ireland and Luxembourg, the Academy Award-nominated Irish company Cartoon Saloon is creating all of the animations.
Back in the GTA, they’re working on a TV series for Family Channel called The Wonderful Wayneys. It stars Jason Priestly and Molly Ringwald as the parents of a brood of multi-exceptional children. Although, their youngest kid is a bit of a black sheep; he’s the mischievous one in a family of high-achievers. Rosen, who’s a father of two, says this comedy will premiere in the spring of 2016.
Recently, Aircraft’s horror comedy Portal To Hell!!!, by director Vivieno Caldinelli and writer Matt Watts, screened at the 40th annual Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Short Cuts series. This marked Rosen’s third time at TIFF. He hopes to use the festival as a platform to develop Portal into a feature film.
Along with these more traditional platforms, Rosen and Leo are working with YouTube stars, such as the Epic Mealtime crew and Filipino Canadian Mikey Bustos, to develop potential TV series for the CBC’s and the Canadian Film Centre’s Screens Comedy Workshop.
Despite Rosen’s impressive roster, he wasn’t always focused on the film industry. He graduated from Montreal’s McGill University with a bachelor of science in anatomy, but around the same time, he started volunteering at the Canadian Film Centre.
Without much formal training in film production, Rosen says his experience working at Jewish summer camps helps him on set. “A lot of the skills I learned at camp are very transferable to producing.”
He moved through Canadian Young Judea camps, eventually becoming the program director at Biluim. “One thing I always bring up on set is the same thing we learned at camp,” he says describing the concept of leadership by example. Rather than just staying in the office, he and Leo endeavour to get their hands dirty, working closely with their writers and their crew.
“There’s only two of us,” says Rosen of his production house. “And we just have to love what we work on. We just look for things that intrigue us because we know we’re going to be living with it for a long time.”
