laurel iona calley milenković • "lo calley" • 30 august '86 (28) • pisces • pastafarian • raised in vegas • resides: los angeles & new york • producer & founder of one match productions
information • films • et cetera • journal

 
Laurel Iona Calley "Lo" Milenković (born August 30, 1986), better known as Lo Calley, is an American film producer and the founder of One Match Productions, established in 2011, and best known for films like Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Her (2013), and American Hustle (2013).

In 2014, TIME placed her in its list of "100 Most Influential People in the World" - Pioneers.

early life
Laurel Iona Milenković was born in Las Vegas, Nevada to casino magnate Ivan Milenković and financial advisor Marianne Calley. Conceived while her father was still legally married to his first wife, details of the resulting scandal appeared in blurbs everywhere from page six to the Wall Street Journal. Laurel was born while divorce proceedings were still in progress. Milenković and Calley would not wed until his divorce was finalized two years later with a settlement rumored to include one of the largest alimony rates ever ordered by a Nevada state judge. Her parents' marriage was not a happy one and Calley recalls "more fights than family outings" during her early childhood up until the point when her parents divorced in 1994. She was eight years old. After a drawn out legal battle marked by vicious mudslinging on both sides, her father was awarded sole custody after it came out in court that Marianne had long been abusing prescription painkillers.

From then on forward, she lived primarily with her father throughout the year, spending only half of the summer and occasional holidays with her mother, who had relocated to New York and remarried before Laurel had even turned nine. Her father also eventually remarried (several times), resulting in a handful of half-siblings.

education
Calley was educated at the prestigous The Meadows School for much of her grade school career, graduating in 2004 as salutatorian before going on to enroll in Stanford University with law school aspirations. However, after less than a year at the university, she left mid-way through her second semester. After a two year sabbatical, she enrolled at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, graduating in 2010 with a B.F.A. in film & television. Notably, Calley had started to produce films prior to even finishing her program at NYU.

career
Her involvement in the film industry stretches back as far as 2006, when she reached out to Katherine Brooks with an interest in providing financial backing for the filmmaker's next movie. She took advantage of limited access to her trust fund in order to finance the movie. Though filmed in 2007, psychological thriller Waking Madison was not released until four years later when it screened at the Newport Beach Film Festival in 2011.

Despite the fact that her first foray into producing remained languishing in post-production hell, Lo continued to invest in independent film in 2008 and 2009 with productions Main Street and Passion Play. Though both films featured leads with name recognition, neither fared well and Calley' fledgling hobby failed to reward her with much encouragement until she found herself amongst the number of executive producers on the Coen Brothers' remake of True Grit. The film was a success in both box office returns and critical reviews, going on to receive ten Academy Award nominations and cement Laurel's determination to continue supporting filmmakers with drive and vision.

In 2010, upon completion of her bachelor's degree, she was granted full access to her trust fund and moved out to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a producer full time. Her first post-uni movie was the Bruce Willis starring Catch .44, produced while she was still in the early stages of launching her own production company.

one match
One Match Productions, titled after a line from a poem ("One match was all it took / But at the right time — it had to be the right time"), was founded by Calley in 2011 with the stated goal of producing "sophisticated high-quality films that might otherwise be deemed risky by contemporary Hollywood studios". She has repeatedly expressed exasperation with Hollywood's infatuation with releasing the same movies over and over, poorly rehashed with nothing new to say and maintains that One Match will remain devoted to bringing fresh and exciting ideas into fruition. Later in 2011, in a move seen as shocking by many, she bid against Lionsgate for and won the rights to the Terminator franchise (Calley would, much to the relief of OMP fans, go on to remove the company from direct involvement with the reboot in 2014).

The company's first release was John Hillcoat's star-studded period piece Lawless in 2012. OMP went on to produce Paul Thomas Anderson's highly anticipated The Master, before landing a certified smash in the Kathryn Bigelow helmed Zero Dark Thirty. The film was a critical darling and another feather to add to the cap. It solidified the infant company's growing status as a beacon for proven, lauded directors with pet projects the big boys were unwilling to see through to the finish line.

With a reputation like that, it was only a matter of time before Laurel and One Match had a red letter year, but no one could have guessed it would come so quickly. In 2013, the company followed up the release of Spike Jonze feature Her with American Hustle. Both movies had established directors, considerable hype, and casts littered with big names, but their acquisitions were a bigger success than Lo had ever anticipated. Heading into the awards season for 2014, she found herself named the fourth person and only woman to be nominated for two best picture Oscars in the same year when both of her company's releases for the previous year found themselves fighting for the statuette. Both went on to lose, but it became undeniable that One Match Productions, in the span of only three years, had become a force to be reckoned with.

current projects
Foxcatcher, set for wide release in late autumn 2014, screened at Cannes (where it won Best Director) and TIFF. It has been reported that she has a film about Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, in the works to be based on an earlier New York Times feature on Assange. June 2014 saw her officially option the screen rights to a memoir (A House in the Sky) written by a humanitarian who spent over a year held captive with her companions by rebel fighters in Somalia. Additionally, she is producing the animated comedy, Sausage Party, about "a group of foods want to be purchased, but get lost and need to return to their aisles before the Fourth of July."

personal life
She has never worked under or been credited with her father's surname of Milenković, instead using her mother's less recognizable maiden name despite their relative estrangement and Lo's reported closeness to Ivan.

Despite being very private and often shying away from any opportunity to give interviews, she has very openly spoken about the fact that she struggled with depression and substance abuse during her teens and that she identifies as bisexual. She supports several charities involved in raising awareness on mental health issues and substance abuse, while also maintaining a presence in the LGBTQ community.

One Match Productions
as producer:
??: That's What I'm Talking About
??: Weiner Dog
16: The True American
16: Sausage Party
15: A House in the Sky
15: The Revenant
14: Foxcatcher
13: American Hustle
13: Her
12: Zero Dark Thirty
12: The Master
12: Lawless

as exec. producer:
13: The Grandmaster
12: Spring Breakers
12: Killing Them Softly

Other work as producer
as producer:
11: Catch .44
10: Main Street
10: Waking Madison

as exec. producer:
18: Untitled Terminator 3
17: Untitled Terminator 2
15: Terminator: Genisys
10: True Grit
10: Passion Play

father mother brothers half-brothers half-sister half-sisters antichrists Ivan Milenković | 80 | entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist Marianne Calley-Putnam | 54 | financial planner and accountant Emory (26 + investment banker), Miles (25 + PhD student) POP: Ivan Jr. (36 + manager @ sands macau), David (32 + producer), Marc (19) POP: Mel(inda) (17 + h.s. student) MOM: Isla (26 + homemaker), Ariel (23 + jewelry designer) Phil Good and Brokowski, maltese and mini dachshund (respectively)
• Though her father's wealth ranks him amongst the wealthiest men in America, she had a pretty normal childhood and Ivan always made it clear to Laurel that she would not be allowed to coast through life on his accomplishments. While the privileges and gifts she enjoyed as a child were certainly more lavish that average, receiving them was always dependent on good behavior and, even more importantly, good grades. Ivan stipulated that she had to complete a college degree before being granted full access to her trust fund.

• She and her mother are not particularly close. Marianne remarried to a Broadway director and had two more children, building a new life for herself that kept her anchored in New York and ensured that Lo rarely ever saw her mother outside of a month or two during the summer break and the winter holidays. After the divorce, Laurel's mother was only present for three of her birthdays during the span of a decade.

• Despite her wealth, both inherited and independently earned, she leads a moderately quiet lifestyle and has a reputation of being warm and easy to work with. She avoids the public eye and maintains a low-key presence on social media.

• She interned with a film studio during her time at university for a summer and spent another working as an uncredited script supervisor on sets she got her foot in the door on with the connections she had made previously. Nothing if not a master networker, most of her success can be attributed to winning over the right people and a talent for being able to build a perfect storm of collaborators on a project.

• While she spends the majority of her time in a small-ish home tucked away in the Hollywood Hills, Laurel also shares an Upper East Side penthouse with her younger half-sister and keeps an apartment in London. She hates staying in hotels and has been known to buy (and subsequently flip) small residences in any given location she has to spend significant time in while overseeing a production.

• She doesn't show up for many parties outside of awards season and her close circle of friends, but since 2012 has bi-annually hosted themed parties on the family yacht or at the Chateau. No journalists or cameras allowed and the rumor mill always goes crazy with tidbits purported to reveal bits and pieces of the sordid details, but nothing has ever been confirmed.

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