Devotion‘s box office will directly benefit the children of Navy veterans. The Jonathan Majors movie will be pitching in on the effort to educate the next generation. Variety‘s Angelique Jackson reported on the links between director JD Dillard and Black Label Media. That company helped finance and produce Devotion. A majority of the film’s proceeds will head to the Brown Hudner Navy Scholarship Foundation. Next year, the first year of honorees will receive their scholarships as managed by the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation. It’s an admirable gesture and one with deep ties for the filmmaker. A lot of fans aren’t aware of the connection between the scholarship and Devotion writ larger.
On Twitter, the director said, “Very excited to finally share this: @DevotionMovie box office proceeds will go to the Brown/Hudner Foundation, a scholarship foundation established to pay the college tuition for the children of Navy service members. and a big thank you to @angelique814 for your words!”
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Inside of the pice, Dillard explained how the box office plan ended up being a “collision of impact and entertainment, in a way that feels organic.”
He continued, “To watch this thing calcify where we could do something really unheard of, in terms of our release actually having an impact component — and not just simply to ‘shine light on this and donate it,’ but to create an infrastructure financially and business wise, where the film could continue that legacy of Jesse and Tom — it just felt like a really beautiful way to have the film reach back into real life.”
“As someone who had to drop out for financial reasons, I know, quite tangibly, what looking down the barrel of that decision is, so it’s incredibly meaningful,” Dillard says of the scholarship. “It’s one of my favorite things about the movie because it can, in a way, be more than film.”
Black Label’s Molly Smith told the outlet about the partnership between the scholarship fund and the people behind this film. “We started working on the scholarship fund from the time we greenlit the film in the spring of 2020,” Smith typed. “Black Label has had a long relationship with Tom Rothman [Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO] and Sony, who agreed to distribute the film and have been amazing supporters if this story. We are all honored to tell this story and honor the sacrifices of these men.”
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