When you've helped create a handful of critically acclaimed feature films, launched a few reality-TV franchises, quietly befriended the world’s most powerful people and sold off a couple of companies of your own for many millions—all by the ripe, old age of 36—the question must become: What next?
For producer Charlie Corwin, the answer is apparently “everything.” The cofounder and self-described “dude who runs things” for Original Media—a production company responsible for hits ranging from the Oscar-nominated film The Squid and the Whale to reality-TV guilty pleasure Miami Ink on the TLC cable network—Corwin is currently working on projects for virtually every distribution platform, from mobile to megaplex. “It’s like when people ask me where I like living better, New York or LA,” says the bicoastal Corwin. “I like living in both. To have the ability to go from reality TV to features to scripted TV to digital—to me, that’s the juice.”
Corwin’s average day starts with a visit to the set of whatever project is currently in production. Most recently that was the movie Twelve, which was filmed in New York City with director Joel Schumacher and a cast that included Chace Crawford, Keifer Sutherland and 50 Cent. Then it’s off to a meeting for The Philanthropist, a new NBC series shooting in Africa about a fictional billionaire setting out to better the world—and, of course, there are the new seasons of Storm Chasers, LA Ink and The Rachel Zoe Project to think about. After that, maybe a little work on some of the seven or eight other projects Original Media has in development. “I guess if you ask me what my favorite part is,” says Corwin, “my answer would be ‘all of it.’”
