Golden Globe winner and Academy Award-nominated actor Ryan Gosling (La La Land) and producer Ken Kao (The Nice Guys) have joined forces to form Arcana. The production company will focus on finding and developing a wide range of unique and diverse material for film and television.
Arcana’s first official project is director Yorgos Lanthimos’ upcoming film The Favourite. The Favourite, which stars Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman, just wrapped principal photography in the UK. The story is based on a Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara script that follows the clandestine personal and political machinations of the reign of Queen Anne, the last monarch of the House of Stuarts. Lanthimos just won best screenplay in Cannes for The Killing of a Sacred Deer and received a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination for The Lobster. Arcana has partnered with producers Ceci Dempsey for Scarlet Films and Ed Guiney and Lee Magiday for Element Pictures, together with Film4 and Fox Searchlight.
Gosling and Kao’s partnership follows their recent collaborations on Shane Black’s detective thriller, The Nice Guys and Terrence Malick’s Song to Song. The pair also previously announced the acquisition of Jeff Lemire's acclaimed graphic novel The Underwater Welder, which they are developing for screen alongside Anonymous Content.
Gosling most recently earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his performance in Damien Chazelle’s highly decorated La La Land and is set to star in Chazelle's upcoming First Man for Universal Pictures. Gosling will next be seen alongside Harrison Ford in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 due out in theaters in October. He wrote, produced and directed his first feature film Lost River, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his role in Half Nelson and earned two Golden Globe nominations in 2012 for The Ides of March and Crazy, Stupid, Love. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe for his performances in Blue Valentine and Lars and the Real Girl.
In addition to Arcana, Kao will continue to run his Waypoint Entertainment production banner and BLOOM with partner Alex Walton. Kao’s production slate includes: Scott Cooper’s Hostiles starring Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike; Martin Zandvliet’s The Outsider starring Jared Leto; Destin Daniel Cretton’s The Glass Castle starring Woody Harrelson, Brie Larson, and Naomi Watts; and Woody Harrelson's Lost in London, the first feature film ever broadcast live, starring Harrelson and Owen Wilson. Waypoint Entertainment recently acquired the rights to bestselling and award-winning author Jeff Lemire and illustrator Emi Lenox's comic series Plutona as well as Mark Millar properties, American Jesus and Supercrooks.