After seeing Terri at LA Comic-Con in 2017, I was eager to talk to her about Legion M, their recent success with the Nicolas Cage revenge flick, Mandy, and what it means to be one of the owners of a crowdfunded movie studio.
Leona Laurie: What brought you and Legion M together?
Terri Lubaroff: The way I came to Legion M was a culmination of what I had been doing and the type of work I had been performing my entire career. I’ve been working professionally in the entertainment industry, in one capacity or another, since I was 19.
I’ve been an actor; I’ve been a writer; I’ve been a producer; I’ve worked in talent representation; I’ve been an entertainment lawyer; I’ve consulted for tech companies. I’ve been an entrepreneur and started my own tech companies. I happen to have been running Meltdown Comics at the time. I started a tech incubator for the company, and they also had an entertainment arm that I was helping run. The founders of Legion M came in to consult with us as pop culture experts on an idea they had. I struck up a friendship, and a couple of months later called them to let them know that I had left Meltdown and was going to be consulting for tech companies that wanted to get into entertainment, or needed more information about entertainment, and they said, “Let us run an idea by you.” That was the birth of Legion M.
LL: I first learned about Legion M at last year’s LA Comic-Con, and I thought, “Well that just makes sense, and it’s about time.” Why did it take so long for someone to do something like this?
TL: We started the company in 2016 using new laws that weren’t in existence until May of 2016. Everything the company is doing, with crowdfunding specifically, are things that have not been done before.
Not only did we have to launch and let the entertainment industry know, “Hi we’re here, and we’re a legitimate company that you should want to work with,” but we also had to inform people about equity crowdfunding, how the company operates and why it’s so unique and important, and that took some time.
I think we’re finally at a point, two-and-a-half years in, where we’re not having to explain what the company is, and instead people are starting to understand that and they’re more interested in what kind of projects we’re doing.