Note: This is an excerpt from a previous BlackAmericaWeb.com Black History Month article. To read the entire article, use the link provided at the bottom.]
Will Packer and Rob Hardy can claim FAMU as the reason why they’re successful today. The Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University is not just where they got an education; it’s where the two met as undergraduates.
Although neither planned a career in the film business, Hardy had film aspirations and decided to make a move independently while studying engineering. Packer helped him out, and that was the genesis of Rainforest Films, where the duo combined their respective creative and business skills to form a strong company.
Rainforest has now produced several box office hits – “Stomp the Yard,” “Obsession,” “This Christmas” and “Takers.” (And we’re grateful to them for making three of those movies with the fine and talented Idris Elba.) In the pipeline is a black “Big Chill”-type movie, as well as a biopic on pardoned drug offender Kemba Smith, but up next is their adaptation of the Steve Harvey book, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.”
We caught up with Hardy and Packer recently to find out what’s made them so successful.
BLACKAMERICAWEB.COM: You both were engineering majors at FAMU. What led you to become filmmakers?
WILL PACKER: Neither of us wanted to be engineers. Rob had a desire to be a filmmaker since he was in high school. He saw the Spike Lee film, “She’s Gotta Have It;” he saw the Hughes Brothers’ film, “Menace to Society,” and they both affected him and made him want to be a storyteller. My journey was a little bit different. I got to FAMU and majored in engineering because I was always really strong in math and science, and I got a scholarship – and it seemed like a stable way to go, but it was never something that I wanted to do. I’ve always been a risk-taker, and what I really wanted to be was an entrepreneur.
I helped Rob make his first movie. I helped find the financing, helped find the actors, helped him ultimately to get the distribution, and later on, I find out that that’s what a producer does.
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