Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's production company was inspired by Sir Peter Jackson's Beatles documentary series.
The 'Good Will Hunting' stars formed Artists Equity two years ago, and Matt recalled watching 'The Beatles: Get Back' with his daughter and becoming emotional about how much they "clearly loved" working together but no longer having the opportunity to do so, which led to him urging his good friend to work more closely together again.
Matt told Deadline: "Ben and I hadn’t written together in so long, and I watched that Peter Jackson Beatles documentary, the one that ends with that performance on the roof.
"These guys are playing, and it’s The Beatles, and they’re live and you can see the joy that they’re playing with. They’re so excited and then Peter Jackson puts a chyron up that says, this is the last live performance that the Beatles ever gave.
"I was watching it with my youngest daughter and she turned and looked at me. She said, ‘Dad, why are you crying?’ I had tears running down my face because of the missed opportunity that these four incredible musicians who clearly loved each other never got.
"That was the impetus behind putting this company together.
"I was like, what are we doing, man? Both of us, this is what we love to do more than anything. The only thing better is doing it together, in any capacity, whether he’s directing or whether we’re acting together or whether we’re producing together, or whether we’re just facilitating for other filmmakers. How much life do we have left and what are we going to do with it?"
While Ben works "exclusively" on Artists Equity projects, his pal is free to work on other projects and the pair admitted the connections he has made as a result have hugely helped their company.
Ben said: "Matt’s integrity, his reputation built over 30 years of working alongside people and getting to know them and people knowing and understanding that Matt’s somebody who’s good for his word, and is such an incredibly meaningful, powerful asset to our business."
Matt added: "But it’s also just our relationships in general, right? We’ve been on the other side of the camera our whole lives, and suddenly have this little studio. Something like 'The Instigators' comes up, Casey [Affleck] sends the script to me, I put it to the side and don’t read it. [My wife] Lucy reads it and tells m, 'Y got to read this one.'
"So I read it and Casey and I start talking about it. Well, who would be the best person to direct this? Hey, what about Doug Liman?
"And that’s just a phone call, with no intermediaries because we all know each other. I just called Doug up and I say, ‘Hey, I’m going to text you this script, take a look. I think it’s really good. Casey wrote it and we want to do it with you.’ And the next day Doug’s calling back going, yeah, I want to do it."
