“The rules are being rewritten”: Artist International Group’s David Unger on dismantling borders, AI and the strikes

Longtime agent and now founder and CEO of Artist International Group (AIG) David Unger speaks five languages, has three passports, grew up between London, Madrid, Paris and Los Angeles and comes from a long line of entertainment industry executives. So his current positioning as global talent manager should come as no surprise.

“I was surprised that no one did it before,” he tells Screen of launching a global entertainment company devoted to talent representation, film and TV production, media finance and branding. “There was always a love of international film, but no one was pursuing these incredibly talented people. Gong Li is an icon of cinema, not just Chinese cinema.”

An agent at ICM for 15 years before setting up AIG in 2017, Unger currently represents Li along with Michelle Yeoh, Mickey Rourke, Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Darko Peric, Anil Kapoor, Fan Bingbing and Rossy de Palma as well as writer/directors including Amanda Sthers, Ludovic Bernard and Tony Kaye. AIG has offices in Los Angeles, New York and London and joint ventures in the UK, France, Korea, Hong Kong, Mexico, Spain and Brazil.

“The whole concept of ‘international’ is really a misnomer. Everything is international,” Unger says, adding: “I think of the entertainment industry like every other business: you want to reach the largest audience possible and play to the world.

“Most companies have multilingual, multicultural executives, yet Hollywood has been slower to embrace that,” he continues. “Streamers understood the rest of the world matters more than traditional Hollywood has. Today, the studios are starting to appreciate the fact that the business is global.”

AIG was founded ahead of the global pandemic, but the seismic shift in the audiovisual landscape in the past few years has made Unger’s positioning even more crucial as foreign-language streamer series like Call My Agent!, Lupin, Money Heist, Fauda and Squid Game flooded talent onto Hollywood’s radar. Global talent has never been in higher demand for both features and TV projects.

“The film industry has just exploded through the advent of technology and streaming,” he says. “We’re now thinking about markets we never gave much thought to like Turkey or Korea because they didn’t have the opportunity to mature and now they are so vibrant and are incredible wellsprings of talent. I only see it going more in this direction because that’s where the subscribers are.”

Building bridges

Unger and his team serve as a bridge between talent, their local agents, Hollywood counterparts, and the studios, streamers or indie producers directly. “We create a dialogue between all parties,” he says. “We’re collaborating with all stakeholders because there’s enough room at the table – we’re not competing with them. We’re looking at the markets, the projects and the talent and finding a connection between the three.”

Together, for example, AIG helped to coordinate the casting of Brazilian actress Sophie Charlotte as the female lead in David Fincher’s Venice competition title The Killer opposite Michael Fassbender. “We were able to make the introduction to David Fincher. Even though she’s already a well-known star in Brazil, this role will give her a wider scope.”

Other recent opportunities include Lee Min-ho in Pachinko, Norwegian actor Rune Temte in Taiki Waititi’s Time Bandits for Apple TV+ and German actor Til Schweiger in Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

Unger also may suggest an international talent for a role not originally written in the script as such, for instance Yeoh’s role as Santa in Paul Feig’s 2019 holiday comedy Last Christmas. “That wasn’t written for an international talent, but Paul Feig tailored the role to her,” says Unger.

“The world is asking for this,” he continues. “There’s a mandate for true diversity and so now these suggestions that at one time were unorthodox, are now perfectly acceptable and desired. There are roles written for men cast with women or roles with one ethnicity cast by another ethnicities. It’s the new normal. All the rules are being rewritten.”

The strikes and the way forward

Also being rewritten are contracts between streamers, studios and actors and writers as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes wage on. Unger says that the unrest is inevitable and a positive sign of changing times. “The strikes are making us all rethink how it all works. The business is going to change and through that change creates opportunity,” he says.

For Unger, the way forward is simple: “We have to learn to get comfortable with transparency. Before, we’d read grosses to know if a movie was a hit. We need to be able to read the modern version of that. Korean dramas and Turkish soaps are unbelievably well-viewed on streaming platforms yet there is no transparency. The streamers should tell us, then we would know what we should be charging them. That’s the great capitalist solution to this. Buyouts aren’t sustainable in the long term.”

With talks still at a standstill, Unger is convinced that resolution will come. “Everyone is looking for a fair and equitable solution. The guilds are looking to give their members a way to participate in the upside and that’s only fair. If talent want to take part in the risk, the studios should allow them to do so.”

The solution, according to Unger, is for streamers to co-finance and partner with local producers “to give local producers and financiers a real bite of the apple, which is going to be very exciting. Where there were buyouts before – in the future, there will be partnerships. The next Squid Game will be co-financed by Korean producers who will participate in the upside of the success.”

Talent too can be a part of the conversations. “The world is going to change because artists will have a greater seat at the table. Before, they were hoping for a role as the token international star in a movie, whereas today there is a wave of interesting entrepreneurial talent knowing how to leverage heft in markets,” he says.

He cites as an example current client Elsa Zylberstein who produced and starred in 2021 French bio-drama Simone: Woman Of A Century and has a slate of further projects in the works via her Franco-American production houses.

AI as a streaming solution

While the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are waging war against the threat of AI in the creative sphere, when it comes to such technology to regulate compensation, Unger argues it may be the most logical path forward. He insists the AI intervention should be used “only for backend payment” and adds: “Technology as a solution is something that we cannot ignore.”

That is, if it is combined with transparency. “We’ll blink someday and you’ll be able to watch everything you want wherever you want. All rights will be managed by AI interface. It will all be transparent and everyone will be compensated and treated fairly and the consumer will win.”

Unger wants AIG to be at the center of an industry at a crossroads, but he feels optimistic about a brighter future for the talent – and for audiences.

“A lot of what was deemed as a sacrosanct model is no longer valid and everything needs to be questioned whether that is windowing, the cost of production and who is participating,” he says.

“The streaming model is proving to be challenging because the talent don’t feel like they are participating so something has to give. That will create a whole new jolt of enthusiasm for the entertainment industry – people are going to be excited to see movies again, watch TV shows again and talent will again feel they are truly a part of the process.”

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