The entrepreneur talks to Instep about becoming executive producer to Hollywood films, his reasons for abstaining from local productions and working on films like The Trust and Terminal.
Trade of talent, in Pakistan, for years has been limited to working across the border while opportunities have mostly been presented to actors alone. Entrepreneur Habib Paracha is a different story.
Having four films to his credit as an executive producer, there has been no looking back. He coincidently found himself meeting filmmakers in Los Angeles and eventually landed himself his first film, Nicolas Cage and Elijah Wood-starrer, The Trust in 2014. At present he’s working on not one, but two upcoming releases, The Last Full Measure (TLFM) comprising an ensemble star cast of Samuel L. Jackson, Sebastian Stan, Ed Harris and Christopher Plummer, slated to release this fall and coming-of-age drama, Strive for earlier next year. However, Paracha’s been most excited to share his most recent outing, Terminal featuring Margot Robbie, which came out across the United States on May 11 and is scheduled to release in the United Kingdom this month.
Instep got a hold of Paracha and over a telephonic chat from London, he spoke about how he landed the film Terminal, smoothly sailing into a seemingly cut-throat field, working towards representing Pakistan well and also plans of eventually looking inwards...
Instep: You’ve been criticized for not working locally at a time when Pakistani cinema is thriving. How do you respond to that?
Habib Paracha (HP): It was an experiment on my part getting into Hollywood. I was spending a lot of time in the US for work and a couple of courses I was doing there; I felt it was a good use of my time and in those years, Pakistani film industry just had this revival, which made me look at that as well. The advantages of doing something in Hollywood vs. starting out in Pakistan was that whatever I end up doing in Hollywood has a global appeal, it gives me that recognition and ability to do anything and anywhere in film, and doesn’t restrict me to my home country. My objective now is to take up projects and learn from them to being able to leverage that knowledge into Pakistan. I know a lot of people in Pakistan working in cinema – Bilal Ashraf, Mahira Khan, Ayesha Omar and in fact, Sheheryar Munawar and I had spoken of collaboration, but I felt I wasn’t ready then to step into the local market. What I pick up from Hollywood, be it post-production or contacts, I believe it can prove beneficial to Pakistan for a later project that I decide to work on.
Instep: Terminal, your most recent cinematic outing is a noir-thriller. Tell us a little about how you came on-board for the project? HP: Some of the producers from my first film were also working on Terminal and they invited me in on this project. Subsequently, in 2016, I had a meeting with Margot Robbie in Los Angeles and her husband, Tom Ackerley. We had lunch and she explained to me how she was associated with the project, being one of her first films that she would be co-producing and she wanted me to come on-board. We got along well and I signed on.
Instep: Pakistan is still exploring divisions of production. What made you take a plunge into cinema in the capacity of an executive producer and what is the way forward?
HP: An executive producer can be involved in several different aspects of mounting the film. From simply helping with the financing or packaging, organizing other investors, representing other companies that have investments or sales - it’s open to how much involvement you want. Producers are required to be on-set, on a daily basis. I don’t have a film background and at that point (when I had begun), this was the only way I could be involved and how I choose to grow from there is up to my own potential.
I wasn’t as involved with The Trust, but with Terminal, I was on-set in Budapest, I was seeing how the director shot the scenes and now, with TLFM, I’m also helping in international sales, we were selling it at Cannes Film Festival this year. So to start, it was a label. It doesn’t matter as long as the people I’m working alongside are going to give me the space to expand on that title by doing as much or little as I have the ability and time to do. Being a producer, next, is definitely on the cards, it is my goal to kind of progress in that way and pivot to coming on as a producer.
Instep: In the past couple of years, demands of increasing representation for actors of color in Hollywood movies have been made. What is it like working behind the camera?
HP: My experience has, fortunately, been very good. Like any business, you have to take care of yourself, but by and large, people have been very helpful. It’s kind of about learning the ropes and connecting with the people, the more you do that, the easier it gets. Breaking in is a little tougher; being from Pakistan, not because of any language-barriers, but just having access to those people proves a little challenging at times. Over the course of the last three years, with so many projects under my belt, that credibility, I feel, goes a long way.
