Stuart Ford Re-Ups AGC Deal, Company Readies Netflix Competition Show
EXCLUSIVE: Stuart Ford and Miguel Palos have signed three-year extensions to their service contracts as CEO and COO of stalwart film and TV producer-seller-financier AGC Studios, which they founded in 2018.
Ford also retains the title of Chairman and remains the largest shareholder in the company. Palos also retains his founding ownership stake in the company alongside founding investors ImageNation (out of Abu Dhabi), Latin American investment fund Media Net and Silicon Valley private equity investor Greg Clark.
Ford, the former IM Global and Miramax exec, is a stalwart of the independent film scene. While at AGC, the company has backed more than 51 projects but has also diversified into TV drama and factual.
AGC Television is currently shooting Embassy, the geo-political action thriller series starring Anna Kendrick, Sam Heughan and J.K. Simmons, and also Beatles biopic series Hamburg Days. AGC recently produced MGM+ mystery thriller series Vanished, starring Kaley Cuoco and Sam Claflin.
In film, AGC Studios is currently in post-production on Lauren Miller Rogen’s Babies starring Anna Kendrick and Seth Rogen; on Ellie Foumbi’s erotic thriller Fleur starring Halle Berry; and on Fing!, the family adventure starring Taika Waititi, based on the popular children’s book. The company is in pre-production on J Blakeson’s Sweat with Ana de Armas, and recently launched sales on AI-produced Cannes market project Critterz.
News today is that AGC Unwritten, the firm’s unscripted division, is in post-production on an as yet untitled Tinder Swindler-adjacent documentary feature for Netflix and is in pre-production on an untitled large-scale competition show for the streamer that is due to start production late this year. The latter marks a first for the company in the game show/competition space.
AGC previously produced successful Netflix doc The Tinder Swindler (2022), about the the crimes of Shimon Hayut (aka Simon Leviev), an Israeli con artist who defrauded women of an estimated $10M.
Ford and Palos have been business partners for two decades, no mean feat in the cut and thrust of the entertainment business. They built IM Global together and sold it to India’s Reliance before brokering another deal for the company to Chinese private equity group TMP. When that took an unexpected turn, the two moved on to AGC, which has been running out of LA since 2018 and is a fixture at all the major film markets.
Said Ford: “Amidst a turbulent media landscape over the past eight years, I’m proud of the stability we’ve created within the company’s management and shareholder ranks which has delivered us safely to where we are in 2026 enjoying what will almost certainly be our most prolific and profitable year so far.”
Added Palos: “We’ve continued to evolve AGC into a highly credible industry player across film, scripted TV, unscripted TV and documentaries in a period during which the industry has transformed multiple times through Covid, the Streaming Wars, Peak TV, union strikes, and large-scale consolidation. We would not have been able to do so without the continued support of our founding investors who we are incredibly grateful for in continuing to believe in our vision and our execution.”
