Level Forward's Public Benefit Model Is Quietly Reshaping How Ethical Entertainment Gets Made
TL;DR: Level Forward, co-founded by Abigail Disney and CEO Adrienne Becker, just expanded its slate from the Sundance award-winning Lady to a Queen's Gambit musical—proving that mission-driven production can turn a profit. Here's what the company's structural bet means for where you'll watch films next, and why this model deserves real attention.
There's a moment in Adrienne Becker's origin story that won't leave me alone: she and documentary filmmaker Abigail Disney (great-niece of Walt) were part of an investor group exploring a bid for Weinstein Company assets in 2018. They walked away. Instead of acquiring the wreckage of one broken Hollywood model, they built something structurally different from scratch. That choice explains everything about what Level Forward actually is and why it's still standing eight years later while louder, better-funded experiments have collapsed.
What Level Forward Actually Is (And Why the Legal Structure Matters)
Level Forward isn't a nonprofit. Not a charity. It's a public benefit corporation — a for-profit company legally required, by its corporate charter, to balance revenue generation against measurable positive societal or environmental impact. Think of it as having a fiduciary duty to both shareholders and the world simultaneously.
That's meaningfully different from what most "impact" production companies do, which is attach a community partner, issue a statement, and move on. Level Forward is trying to reorganize who sits at the capitalization table. They compensate key community partners with stock options. Ownership, not just acknowledgment.
Here's what's actually on the books:
- Founded: 2018 by Adrienne Becker (formerly CAA, DailyCandy, Nielsen) and Abigail Disney
- Headquarters: New York City
- Current team: 7 staff, including Carmelyn P. Malalis (former NYC Commissioner on Human Rights, head of impact) and playwright Andrea Ambam as director of programming
- Partner network: More than 100 organizations — funders, community groups, creative collaborators
- Budget range: Now targeting $5–$15 million per project (up from $2–$4 million)
- Financials: Five consecutive years of revenue growth; losses narrowing. Abigail Disney doesn't subsidize the company.
Becker has been candid about the pressure this moment puts on the work. "People lose their jobs. Organizations shut down," she told Deadline. "I'm shocked that we were able to do everything we did last year because there's been so much retrenchment."
But here's what matters: she hasn't retreated. "There's something about this movement — this idea that commercial entertainment should be sustainable and accountable — that's taking hold," she said. When a former CAA executive says that, it's worth listening.
The Current Slate: Lagos to Broadway, Chess to Monologues
Level Forward's projects right now are genuinely all over the map — which is exactly the point.
Films in production or post:
- Lady — Olive Nwosu's feature debut, following a female taxi driver in Lagos. Won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting Ensemble at Sundance 2025. (This is the credential that opens doors.)
- Mother Justice short film series — Following the Oscar-nominated short Red, White and Blue, focusing on a single mother forced to cross state lines for an abortion.
- Untitled feature with Taika Waititi's production house and Janelle Monáe's Wondaland — Details are still locked down, but that combination is genuinely exciting. Waititi has a track record of commercially successful, tonally distinctive work (Jojo Rabbit, What We Do in the Shadows). Monáe's label has produced Antebellum and Glass Onion. If this lands, it could be Level Forward's first mainstream breakout.
Stage projects:
- The Queen's Gambit musical — Adapting the beloved Netflix miniseries for the stage. Casting will be major entertainment news when it drops. The part I'm most curious about is whether they'll try to theatrically capture the visual language of Beth Harmon's ceiling-chess hallucinations from Episode 1 — that overhead chessboard imagery was so specific to the screen that translating it to a proscenium stage feels like either a stroke of genius or an impossible ask.
- The Vagina Monologues — Returning to the stage in 2026 in partnership with Roundabout Theater, playwright V (formerly Eve Ensler), and director Noma Dumezweni.
- Girl, Interrupted — A theatrical production at New York's Public Theater, co-produced with Barbara Broccoli, Angelica Zollo, Patrick Milling-Smith, and Brian Carmody.
Series in development:
- Soul Table — A food travel series pilot featuring former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin, activist LaTosha Brown, and Michelin chef Dominique Crenn (Chef's Table).
The connective tissue isn't genre. It's the question the work asks: what could the world look like if storytelling took that seriously?
Where to Actually Watch Level Forward's Track Record
The company's profile in India is lower than it deserves to be, which is part distribution reality and part awareness gap that platforms haven't bridged well yet.
Lady hasn't confirmed an Indian streaming home as of now. Given its festival pedigree and focus on an African female protagonist, Netflix India (aggressive about global festival titles) or MUBI (available in India, perfect home for international arthouse cinema) are natural fits. Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker is the fastest way to check current availability as distribution deals confirm.
Past Level Forward titles have landed across platforms: The Assistant (2019, Julia Garner, directed by Kitty Green) hit Netflix in several regions. Björk: Cornucopia documented the Icelandic artist's concert staging at the Shed in New York. Good Night, and Good Luck made the leap from film to stage. Suffs, the musical about women's suffrage, aired on PBS in the US.
Watch for: the Queen's Gambit musical casting announcement, which will generate real column inches regardless of production details. If that Waititi/Monáe project generates a filmed version (increasingly common for prestige streaming), it'll almost certainly land on Netflix India or Prime Video India with actual marketing behind it. Regional language dubbing for niche Level Forward titles remains unlikely in the near term, but English-with-subtitles availability across MUBI and Netflix India makes them accessible.
Why the Budget Increase Matters
The jump from $2–$4 million to $5–$15 million per project is more significant than it sounds. At the lower range, you're making films that depend almost entirely on festival momentum and critical goodwill for distribution. You're hoping to be discovered. At $5–$15 million, you can attract name talent with real commercial upside, negotiate better distribution terms, and actually compete for placement on major platforms rather than crossing your fingers.
The Waititi/Monáe project sits right at this inflection point. If it delivers something with both cultural ambition and real audience reach, it becomes the proof-of-concept Level Forward needs to attract the next tier of institutional investment.
The Company's Creative Lineage — What Actually Works
Level Forward's eight-year track record is more substantial than its low profile suggests, which is partly because entertainment media doesn't know how to write about success that isn't noise.
Films include The Assistant (that quietly devastating performance by Julia Garner in 2019, arriving just as #MeToo reckoning was deepening), Mountains, and The Year Between. On stage: Jagged Little Pill (based on Alanis Morissette's 1995 album, which sold 33 million copies worldwide and became the best-selling debut by a female artist — turning that cultural weight into a Tony-nominated book musical was a genuine creative risk, not a safe jukebox play), How to Dance in Ohio, and Suffs.
What most write-ups get wrong is the framing. They treat Level Forward as a feel-good story about ethical business. The harder, more honest read is that it's a structural experiment in whether entertainment's supply chain can be reorganized so that community stakeholders become literal co-owners. Not consultants. Not acknowledgments in the credits. Actual equity holders. Every other "impact" label in Hollywood right now — Participant, Concordia, the various studio sustainability initiatives — still operates within a traditional corporate shell where impact is a line item, not a legal obligation baked into the charter. Level Forward is the only one that's made the governance itself the product.
Whether that scales is the real question.
What Becker Learned From CAA (And Why It Matters)
Adrienne Becker spent years at one of Hollywood's most powerful talent agencies. That's not incidental to what Level Forward does. She's not an idealist who doesn't understand the business; she's someone who watched the industry's financial plumbing for decades and decided it was broken in specific, fixable ways.
"There's something about this movement — this idea that commercial entertainment should be sustainable and accountable — that's taking hold," she told Deadline. That's not wishful thinking. That's an industry veteran recognizing a structural shift.
The company's stated mission reads almost deliberately ambitious: "screen and stage creative choices leading to productions that portray what the world could be, while earning accolades and better than industry average financial recoupment; regenerative economic models; community partners who are also owners."
That last part isn't PR language. It's governance.
What's Actually Coming This Year
Lady has the Sundance credential that opens doors with distributors and platforms. The Queen's Gambit musical casting is coming — that announcement alone will generate real entertainment news coverage.
The untitled Waititi/Monáe project is the wild card. Both names carry genuine recognition. Both have streaming infrastructure that could land a resulting film on Netflix or Prime with real marketing. For current availability of all Level Forward titles across regions, Movie OTT tracks updates as deals confirm.
The Mother Justice shorts, focusing on abortion access, are arriving in a specific political moment. Timing, in streaming, matters.
The Real Test Ahead
Level Forward enters mid-2026 with its most ambitious slate to date, a company structure that's survived genuine political and cultural headwinds, and a CEO who's been doing this long enough to know the difference between momentum and hype.
Here's what I'm actually curious about: does the Waititi/Monáe project become Level Forward's first genuine mainstream breakout — the title that makes casual Netflix browsers stop and ask, "wait, who made this?" Because if it does, the public benefit corporation model stops being an interesting footnote and starts being a template.
That's the bet they're making.
