{"id":842319,"date":"2026-09-10T00:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T00:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/842319\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T00:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T00:10:09","slug":"mighty-mary-director-mary-mazzio-on-her-sailing-documentary-backed-by-paramount-and-amc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/842319\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Mighty Mary’ Director Mary Mazzio On Her Sailing Documentary Backed By Paramount And AMC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBefore writing and directing the sailing documentary Mighty Mary<\/a>, Mary Mazzio<\/a> knew plenty about fast-moving boats.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawyer-turned-filmmaker competed on the U.S. rowing team at the 1992 Summer Olympics, a feat replicated in 2024 by her daughter, Daisy.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll those hours on the water attuned her decades ago to the story at the heart of her new film, which opens in theaters Friday in 15 U.S. markets. The film takes its name from the sailboat whose crew in a 1995 runup to the America\u2019s Cup was made up nearly entirely by women. In an era when Dennis Conner had restored the U.S. to sailing glory, the boldness of the Mighty Mary\u2019s run put a media spotlight on female athletes as intense as that on figures today like the WNBA\u2019s Caitlin Clark.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSix of my teammates from the Olympic team hopped onto Mighty Mary,\u201d whose crew was chosen via a process crossing a casting call with a fitness competition, Mazzio recalled to Deadline. \u201cI remember being struck by not just how audacious this experiment was. Not only did you have a group of rookies going toe to toe with the best sailors on the planet, but they were women. And the big question was, how are they going to handle the physicality? I knew how strong they were, how much they could lift, what they could do in the gym. Even so, these boats are 55,000 pounds!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlong will Bill Koch, who conceived of the female experiment as the benefactor of the Mighty Mary, another billionaire sailor with ties to Mighty Mary is Larry Ellison. The Oracle co-founder and backer of Paramount co-founded racing circuit SailGP, which recently landed a TV rights deal with Paramount-owned CBS. Paramount Global Content Distribution is releasing Mighty Mary on non-theatrical platforms outside the U.S., with the project initially coming in via Skydance Sports. AMC Entertainment\u2019s burgeoning distribution arm is handling the domestic theatrical release.<\/p>\n

\n\tMazzio, whose films include I Am Jane Doe and Underwater Dreams, recently spoke to Deadline about her mission-driven approach, the value of theatrical, and how Elizabeth Banks and Hugh Jackman came aboard to co-narrate Mighty Mary. The conversation has been edited for clairity and length. <\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Once you started making films full time, did you put this story on the top of your list of projects you wanted to take on?<\/p>\n

\n\tMARY MAZZIO: We partnered with ESPN on my second film, Apple Pie, in 2002. It was about athletes and their mothers. And I knew about Dawn Riley, who was the team captain of Mighty Mary. I remember thinking, I\u2019ve got to tell this story. But we already had Grant Hill, who became my producing partner on this, plus Shaquille O\u2019Neal, Drew Bledsoe, Mia Hamm. And so, ESPN was like, \u2018Sailing. Alright, we gotta cut that.\u2019 So, Dawn Riley ended up on the cutting-room floor! I said to her, \u2018Dawn, I will be back.\u2019 She\u2019s like, \u2018Yeah, yeah, you\u2019ll be back.\u2019 And here we are. <\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Even though you knew the story and the crew members were contemporaries and teammates, were there surprises as you dug into the research and did interviews?<\/p>\n

\n\tMAZZIO: I think the biggest surprise that came to me was what the men had to say, and the nuance that they brought to this movie. I think the perspective that they brought, you know, the \u201990s were, as one of the sailors said, \u2018pre-#MeToo.\u2019 So it was a very different time as it relates to women in the workplace, women on the playing field. and for somebody like Paul Cayard, a famous, famous sailor to say, \u2018You know, as we think about how we evolve, it\u2019s really important to move away from what our fathers taught us and lean into what our sons are learning.\u2019 When he said that, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I thought, This is so timely today.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: In telling a 30-year-old story set against a background of gender politics, were there awkward pieces of footage or dilemmas about showing how the women were treated without turning the film into a polemic?<\/p>\n

\n\tMAZZIO: The men and the male management that are in the film say what their mistakes were. They didn\u2019t know me. They didn\u2019t know how I was going to use that. The fact that they sort of laid that out there and just hoped I accepted the material was extraordinary. You know, Bill Koch, you hear his voice saying, \u2018We made a mistake not having a woman in upper management.\u2019 Retrospect and hindsight is always super easy, right? I think about going into the workplace in the 90s as a young lawyer. I remember vividly when I made a comment in a group meeting and nobody said anything. And one of my male colleagues said the very same thing I had said five minutes earlier and it was, \u2018Oh, boy, that was really good, really insightful!\u2019 How I handled it was with humor. And I said, \u2018I think I just said that five minutes ago, am I chopped liver?\u2019 You do it in a way where you\u2019re not polarizing or you\u2019re not viewed as \u2018that difficult woman.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: How did AMC get involved?<\/p>\n

\n\tMAZZIO: We\u2019ve had a relationship with AMC going back about 15 years. I said to Skydance and Paramount that we had spoken with AMC, and they opened up our last eight movies. I also mentioned Hugh and Elizabeth were our narrators. And they said, \u2018Well, that\u2019s fantastic because normally we would not put a doc into a theatrical rotation.\u2019 It\u2019s a relationship business, and so we have just maintained the relationship.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: When I heard it was opening in 15 cities, I was expecting Newport, RI, San Diego, maybe Nantucket. But you\u2019ve gone broader than those sailing communities, right?<\/p>\n

\n\tMAZZIO: We\u2019re in Atlanta, we\u2019re not yet in Texas but hoping to be. At the end of the day, this is not a sailing movie, this is an amazing, extraordinary story that any dad can bring their daughter to. <\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Paramount backer Larry Ellison, whose son, David, is the company\u2019s CEO, is a sailing enthusiast and funder of SailGP. He would seem to be a potential booster of your film, has that connection helped?<\/p>\n

\n\tMAZZIO: Hugh Jackman owns SailGP Australia. Elizabeth is also a team owner \u2013 soccer, but women\u2019s sports. So she was really fired up by the story itself. I don\u2019t know if Larry knows about our project. <\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Seriously?! Come on! You get very, you get very powerful people on the phone for a living. You need to find his cell number. Maybe you\u2019ll be the one who brings about a resolution of the Warner Bros. Discovery deal. You\u2019ll be the George Mitchell of the moment \u2013 only in Hollywood, not Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

\n\tMAZZIO: [Laughs.] I don\u2019t know about that. That\u2019s hilarious. <\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Your work has always had goals beyond commercial milestones. What are the goals for Mighty Mary?<\/p>\n

\n\tMAZZIO: In some of our previews in theaters, young girls have said, \u2018That was really empowering,\u2019 using that word. We\u2019re living in a time where the box, especially for girls with social media, defines you by how you look. This message that you can dream and do something ridiculous and impossible, and sometimes if you can swallow your fear \u2013 not get rid of your fear, but just say, \u2018Let me try. And if I fail, so what?\u2019 I have failed so often, and I remember crying and my mother saying, \u2018You can cry for a day. Then tomorrow, you\u2019re gonna wipe off your tears, you\u2019re gonna get right back up and get up to the plate.\u2019 That is a message we do not hear. If you fail, you\u2019re supposed to lie down and stay down. And I think ultimate growth comes from failure. So I want to encourage girls that it\u2019s OK to try. You may not look like a curated spectacle that is sort of being reinforced by society writ large and especially social media, but get out there, get dirty, get ugly, and great things can happen or great lessons can be learned from that exercise. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before writing and directing the sailing documentary Mighty Mary, Mary Mazzio knew plenty about fast-moving boats. The lawyer-turned-filmmaker…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,356601,356602,206],"class_list":["post-842319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-mary-mazzio","tag-mighty-mary","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}