Judy Cairo’s first feature film, Crazy Heart, was one of the surprise hits of 2009/2010 and won two Academy Awards (Best Actor, Jeff Bridges and Best Original Song “The Weary Kind,”), two Golden Globes, and the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and Best Actor. Cairo and her Informant Media partners arranged the financing for the film, and she was a hands-on producer of the movie, which was released by Fox Searchlight in December 2009. Based on the novel by Thomas Cobb, the film starred Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall and represented the directorial debut of Scott Cooper, who also wrote the screenplay.
Under the previous shingle of Cairo/Simpson Entertainment, Cairo produced 20 made-for-television films including the acclaimed 4-hour mini-series Elvis, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers; the biopic Gleason, and The Boy King, a drama about Martin Luther King, Jr. as a child, for which Judy worked closely with Coretta Scott King and Christine King Farris, to accurately portray the childhood influences which shaped King’s life. The film was Cairo’s first, and won the George Foster Peabody. Her other films have garnered Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, the Christopher Award, IPA Satellite Awards, and numerous Emmy nominations.
In 2007, Cairo founded Informant Media, which develops, finances, and produces independent feature films, with partners Michael A. Simpson and Eric Brenner.
Upcoming Informant Media projects feature a diverse slate of films to go into production in 2010 including Hysteria, The Expatriate and Boobytrap.
