Sophie Watts (History 2004) has always been driven by a love of media. She says: “I packed a suitcase and moved to LA in 2007 within weeks of graduating from Caius.”
Early in her career, Sophie was a producer and financier on the film Bully (2011), a well-regarded documentary film about school bullying in the US.
Sophie, now a media executive, entrepreneur and investor, has had a hand in at least 75 films in the last 15 years. Titles include the acclaimed Bad Moms (2016), Molly’s Game (2017), The Foreigner (2017), Hustlers (2019), and The Gift (2015).
President and Co-founder of film studio STX from 2011-2018, Sophie established global financing and distribution deals, allowing the company to produce films on comparatively smaller budgets.
Sophie is committed to supporting work that empowers women, promoting the amplification of authentic creative voices, and breaking down systemic barriers. This is something she shares with her late mother, Tessa, who was a pioneer in the music industry. Her mother was a founding colleague of Richard Branson’s at Virgin Music, championing the production of ambitious music videos, such as Sledgehammer, and young directors like David Fincher. She went on to become Head of Programming for MTV.
“She helped build a system that allows artists to express themselves through music videos which are perfect vignettes of art film-making,” Sophie says.
“I grew up in a household with a mother who was breaking boundaries in the 1970s, 1980s and onwards. That defines how I approach the world. How we disrupt a system in a way that supports the art of the artist and build the infrastructure around protecting and empowering creative voices which my mother did so masterfully for many years. This will always be the core of what I do.”
Sophie, who splits her time between New York and LA, also started out in the music film industry in the early 2000s, filming artists live on stage including Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, U2, Beyoncé, Madonna and Mariah Carey.
DVDs were in use when Sophie was at university as streaming services were yet to be conceived.
“I theorised that the shift in technology would prompt a drastic change in the way audiences would consume art content and engage with their favourite stars and celebrities,” she says.
“The way audiences consume creative media content continues to shift and develop at pace with technology. Hollywood is in the midst of an actors' strike that was prompted in large part by the advent of new technologies like AI.
“When I moved to the States, the transition to streaming, to a new way to mass view content, was a real opportunity. The consolidation of these giant studios was inevitable.”
Sophie explains AI is the crux of what caused the mass writers’ strike for screenwriter showrunners, which has lasted much of this year and continues to be an appropriate point of focus for the actors’ strike negotiation.
She says: “Technology is evolving and we shouldn't be trying to stymie that. We should use it in a way that does not replace the creative human mind. However, AI is an infinitely supportive knowledgeable system that can be available to support a human mind. In Hollywood, the appropriate concern is that major studios, distributors or financiers of content will use technology to supplant the human mind. I don't think that resonates with audiences who want to feel a human connection.”
Sophie’s motivation is to connect with audiences. “You have to be able to make someone laugh, cry, to collectively feel something. I don’t believe that feeling will ever come from technology, but if there's a way to use that technology to help that vision come to action, that's a great thing,” she says.
In pursuit of innovative new ways to tell stories and share creative content Sophie also co-founded Metacurio in 2021, a next-generation creative studio dealing with web3/crypto/NFT-native marketing, talent and consultancy. A recent collaboration with Ukrainian boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko, for example, saw his NFT sale raise $170k for UNICEF and the Ukrainian Red Cross.
“Audiences want to have a deeper, richer relationship with the content that they're experiencing, including live events, sports and products,” she says. “There can be an ecosystem around the artist. My focus is on talent and the fertiliser is always the premium content.”
