EXCLUSIVE: Kino Lorber has acquired North American distribution rights to Shari & Lamb Chop, a documentary about youngsters’s TV trailblazer Shari Lewis who created a sensation together with her cuddly and feisty sock puppet Lamb Chop.
Lisa D’Apolito (Love, Gilda) directed the movie, which made its world premiere at DOC NYC. Kino Lorber plans to open the movie theatrically on a July 18, adopted by a digital, instructional, and residential video launch. Shari & Lamb Chop is produced by White Horse Photos and MoJo World Arts and introduced by Harmony Originals and Olive Hill Media in affiliation with The 51 Fund, Carlene Laughlin and Chicago Media Undertaking.
“Earlier than Fred Rogers and Jim Henson, there was Shari Lewis, a youngsters’s tv pioneer whose whimsical characters and ebullient spirit have guided generations of youngsters as they got here of age,” notes a launch. “Raised within the Bronx by a proud feminist mom and a professor father who moonlighted as Peter Pan the Magic Man, Shari turned a multitalented dancer, singer, and magician. However when an harm sidelined her dance aspirations, she channeled her creativity right into a ardour for ventriloquism, creating the now beloved sock puppet characters Charlie Horse, Hush Pet and, after all, Lamb Chop.”
Shari Lewis, with Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse, elevating funds for the Rhode Island Hosptial Belief Firm, circa early Sixties
Everett Assortment
The discharge continues, “From her early years of TV success to the crush of her present’s cancellation to her Nineties comeback in her 60s, Lisa D’Apolito’s heartfelt doc charts the life, loves, and profession hits and misses of the spunky perfectionist whose expertise and perseverance stand as a testomony to ladies’s energy and eternally modified the panorama of youngsters’s leisure.”
The acquisition deal was negotiated by Kino Lorber VP of Acquisitions Karoliina Dwyer and Wesley Adams, VP, Manufacturing & Distribution, and Sophia Dilley, EVP, for Harmony Originals.
“There’s no scarcity of Lamb Chop love in her illuminating movie, however Lisa D’Apolito has gone past a heat embrace to extra deeply examine Shari Lewis’ distinctive presents and profession,” stated Richard Lorber, Chairman and CEO of Kino Lorber. “The voices she projected via her beloved critters echo the a number of dimensions of Lewis’ personal character and inventive challenges as a performer and media pioneer. Hers was an entrepreneurial breakthrough in a male dominated tv business, blazing a path for different media innovators however with few becoming a member of the ranks of Lamb Chop as icons of high quality household leisure. We cherish the possibility to shine a brand new mild on the legacy of Shari and Lamb Chop for her loyal followers in addition to new audiences who will welcome this deal with.”
Shari Lewis seems with Lamb Chop on ‘The Dean Martin Present’
Everett Assortment
In an announcement, D’Apolito commented, “Shari Lewis was a pressure of creativity and resilience. She believed deeply within the intelligence and creativeness of youngsters. I’m so excited that audiences will have the ability to expertise Shari’s unimaginable story. Her power, her coronary heart, and the enjoyment she shared with generations are precisely what we want proper now.”
Shari Lewis’s profession started within the early Nineteen Fifties, near the daybreak of tv. Over the a long time, she received a dozen Emmy Awards, a Peabody, a Kennedy Middle Honor, and the Monte Carlo Prize for the World’s Finest Tv Selection Present, amongst many different awards.
Director Lisa D’Apolito, Mallory Lewis and Lamb Chop attend the ‘Shari & Lamb Chop’ premiere on November 11, 2023 in New York
John Nacion/Getty Photos
The documentary is produced with the complete cooperation of the Shari Lewis property, via her daughter Mallory Lewis who continues her mom’s legacy performing with Lamb Chop usually throughout the U.S. Lewis stated of the movie, “Lamb Chop and I are thrilled that the true story of the ‘multi-faceted real-life girl’ (our mother) Shari Lewis will lastly be shared together with her followers, younger and previous.”
Along with DOC NYC, Shari & Lamb Chop has screened at festivals all over the world together with the Raindance Movie Pageant within the UK, the Bentonville Movie Pageant in Arkansas, Santa Barbara Worldwide Movie Pageant, and the Solar Valley Movie Pageant in Idaho, amongst others.
Shari & Lamb Chop is produced by White Horse’s Cassidy Hartmann (The Apollo) and Nicholas Ferrall (The Beatles: Eight Days A Week), MoJo’s Morris Ruskin (Homicide in a Small City), Douglas Warner (Paul Rodriguez: The Right here & Wow), and D’Apolito. White Horse’s Nigel Sinclair (The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Damaged Coronary heart) and Jeanne Elfant Festa (Pavarotti) government produced. The movie can be government produced by Bob Valentine, Sophia Dilley and Wesley Adams for Harmony Originals; Joseph Mellicker for MoJo World Arts; Jordan Walker-Perlman; Michael Cho, Mimi Rode and Tim Lee for Olive Hill Media; Caitlin Gold, Naomi McDougall Jones and Lindsay Lanzillotta for The 51 Fund; Carlene C. Laughlin; Steve Cohen and Paula Froehle for Chicago Media Undertaking; and Benjamin J. Murphy. White Horse’s Robert Dietz and Harmony’s Scott Pascucci and Charles Hopkins served as Co-Government Producers.
“Wes [Adams] and I are thrilled to assist associate this glorious movie with the nice staff at Kino Lorber,” acknowledged Sophia Dilley, EVP Harmony Originals. “They’re the right associate to carry this movie to audiences in theaters and past.”
Kino Lorber
Kino Lorber not too long ago acquired U.S. rights to Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, Shoshanna Stern’s documentary concerning the Oscar-winning actress, which premiered at Sundance. In March, Zeitgeist in affiliation with Kino Lorber acquired A Photographic Reminiscence, Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s award-winning documentary. Kino Lorber earned an Oscar nomination earlier this yr for Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, directed by Johan Grimonprez and produced by Rémi Grellety and Daan Milius.
