Ali Afshar, Former Racing Pro and Holiday Movie Mogul, Looks Beyond Christmas for Growth
variety.comMatt Donnelly Senior Film Writer For quite some time now, Christmas has come every day for Ali Afshar. The actor, producer and former race car driver is founder and president of ESX Entertainment, a prolific indie film and TV production company that’s made its name in recent years pumping Yuletide content to streamers amid the pandemic.
The projects are modestly budgeted and shot efficiently and safely, mostly due to Afshar’s commandeering of his hometown — a sleepy Sonoma County village called Petaluma, where he built a soundstage from a converted barn and mines below-the-line crew from local residents.
Titles include Netflix’s “A California Christmas” and its sequel “City Lights,” and the HBO Max originals “A Christmas Mystery,” “A Hollywood Christmas” and “Holiday Harmony.” The mechanism he’s built functions at such a level that, during a recent conversation with Variety, Afshar revealed he was in the middle of filming another one — “A Wine Country Christmas.” The latest stars frequent Afshar collaborator Josh Swickard, Sol Rodriguez (“Grachi”), soap vet and “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” alum Eileen Davison and Omar Gooding.
Alex Ranarivelo is directing the project that follows a young widow struggling to keep a local vineyard from falling into the wrong hands while raising her two young boys.
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