Atlanta producer believes he can help make the city a hub for indie films
Atlanta is amid a head-pounding Hollywood hangover. After 18 years of 30% Georgia film production tax credits and big budget films shooting nonstop in the city, the production boom has slowed significantly.
In 2025, Marvel Studios started moving its film projects to England, which offers cheaper labor costs. The locals and new arrivals who flocked to Atlanta for film work have been left at the altar like a jilted bride. As a result, film production in the city has nosedived, dropping by nearly 50% in the past three years, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But maybe, Atlanta native and Midtown resident John Henry Hinkel suggested, Hollywood’s departure is more a blessing than a curse. Because although the film industry did employ large swaths of Atlanta and Georgia talent, it also used the city as a source of cheap labor, often in below-the-line roles as gaffers, grips or camera crew. And the films shot here were often standard multiplex fare, not exactly making inroads in storytelling or vision.
“I think if you’re playing the game of ‘we’re the cheapest place to shoot,’ eventually you’re going to be undercut by someone else or somewhere else,” Hinkel said.
Liaison Pictures, Hinkel’s production company, hopes to change all of that.
“I see an opportunity in Georgia, particularly around financing these sort of smaller, let’s say sub $5 million, even sub $2 million, films, and trying to use the resources that have been built in this state, and the facilities and the talent that is here,” he said.
Hinkel said he hopes an independent film industry can thrive in Atlanta and take advantage of the real estate and talent Hollywood left in its wake. When Marvel decamped for England, he said, it left experienced crews, facilities, locations, airport connectivity and production infrastructure that Liaison aims to tap.
Hinkel grew up in Atlanta, went to Arbor Montessori and then Paideia, schools he said nurtured outside-the-box thinking that has served him well in an industry where every film deal seems to require a fresh approach.
At Harvard, he studied history and literature of America, and met his Liaison co-founder, Andrew Ostapchenko, in a documentary film class. Ostapchenko has made a small fortune as a professional poker player, an unorthodox career path that began when he was a student at Harvard.
After graduating college in 2012, Hinkel cut his teeth for 10 years working in Hollywood, first with producer John Lesher. That experience was formative. “He was just a champion of really inventive filmmakers,” Hinkel said of Lesher productions, including “Fury,” “Black Mass” and the Academy Award-winning “Birdman.”
Hinkel then spent some time as a professional screenwriter and film director, including the 2023 short “Morning Joy.” He found writing full time was challenging.
“As a writer, especially within the studio system, you have very limited control over the outcome of the projects, and I think I’m a bit more of a control freak, and so I felt like: It’s fun to write. It’s fun to be creative,” he said. “But I would be disappointed when projects would stall … and, so, I decided to get back onto the other side of the table in producing.”
He landed at independent production house Delirio Films, which focused on documentaries. There, Hinkel discovered another kind of producing, outside of big budget Hollywood films.
Hinkel and Ostapchenko formed Liaison Pictures in 2023 with the goal of producing smaller, independent film projects.
“John Henry is a gifted visionary with an unwavering sense of loyalty, but it was really his adaptability that convinced me to take the leap and form Liaison Pictures with him” Ostapchenko said. “Coming from poker, I have a deep appreciation for people who can weather storms and face the unpredictable without flinching.”
Ostapchenko now lives in Las Vegas — like Atlanta, an unlikely place to work in film, Hinkel notes — the professional gambler’s industry town.
Hinkel came back to Atlanta in 2022 after a decade on the West Coast to get some breathing room from L.A.’s industry-town vibe.
“I just wanted to step out of that a little bit and be in a place where film was not the dominant industry,” he said. “I’m not caught in sort of what is the hot thing in L.A., or what everyone’s buzzing about.”
And he said he thinks Atlanta, even with its bruising film losses, is poised for something better.
“We have world-class facilities, world-class crews, you know, amazing film professionals in the city, and we don’t want those people to leave and go to wherever the next cheapest place is to film.”
He points to phenomena such the Los Angeles-filmed “Obsession,” Curry Barker’s micro budget horror-romance, yielding $517 million worldwide. “There’s no reason that couldn’t have been shot in Atlanta,” Hinkel said.
Liaison Pictures has multiple films in production, including several with an Atlanta hook. “Behemoth Ann Holds a Seance,” co-produced with French indie Because the Night Productions and slated for a 2028 release, is an autobiographical documentary directed by Isidore Bethel, Hinkel’s onetime Paideia classmate.
Other projects include “A Nightmare on Malcolm X Boulevard,” a blaxploitation horror comedy by Atlanta-raised writer-director Daddy Ramazani that has begun filming in New York. Liaison is also developing a project that Hinkel’s father knew about from working as a real estate lawyer in Atlanta. The film will center on former Atlanta art dealer David Ramus’ semi-autobiographical novel “Thief of Light” about an art dealer and heroin addict who winds up in prison for selling forgeries. (In real life, Ramus was convicted of fraud).
One of Liaison’s latest projects is the documentary “Coroner to the Stars,” heading to video on demand. It’s a fascinating look at Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the former Los Angeles County chief medical examiner-coroner. Noguchi was a maverick in forensic science in the 1960s and 1970s. He performed autopsies on Marilyn Monroe, John Belushi, Bobby Kennedy, Sharon Tate and Natalie Wood, and was often persecuted for his Japanese heritage. The film was co-directed by Ben Hethcoat and Keita Ideno and boasts a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Atlanta podcast and film producer Tommy Andres originated the “Coroner” project in 2010 and brought Hinkel in when the production foundered. Andres said Hinkel located funding, helped crystallize the script and was instrumental in identifying the archival footage that would help tell Noguchi’s story.
It’s tempting to think Hinkel may be just the right blend of ambition, gumption and connectivity with Los Angeles and New York players to jump-start Atlanta’s flagging film scene.
There’s a saying, according to Andres: “If you want to get something done, ask a busy person. And John Henry Hinkel was like the quintessential busy person. He has a million things going, but he gets them all done.”