Meet The Entrepreneurs Behind Spike Lee’s New ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Film

Jason Michael Berman, Denzel Washington, Elijah Wright, Jeffrey Wright, Aubrey Joseph, Ilfenesh Hadera, Spike Lee, A$AP Rocky, Wendell Pierce and Alan Fox attend the “Highest 2 Lowest” red carpet at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 19, 2025 in Cannes, France.

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Come August 15 in theaters and streaming September 5 on Apple TV+, audiences will be able to witness the fifth and possibly final time that veteran Hollywood heavyweights Denzel Washington and Spike Lee reunite for a cinematic storytelling with Highest 2 Lowest, their latest drama from A24 and Apple Original Films.

Based off of the 1959 book King’s Ransom, which was then adapted into famed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film titled High and Low, Highest 2 Lowest follows longtime music producer mogul David King (Washington), whose world is turned upside down when his teenage son is kidnapped and a hefty payout is demanded for his release. Things get tricky when the kidnapping goes wrong, as loyalty between loved ones is ultimately put into question.

Before Highest 2 Lowest officially got in the filmmaking hands of Lee and Washington, producer Jason Michael Berman and screenwriter Alan Fox helped orchestrate this project into motion.

Sitting down with Fox and Berman, I wondered what the early process was like, in getting this film one step closer to the screen.

Berman said, “When we got the rights to the original Kurosawa film from the 1960s – we got the rights back in the summer of 2019 – it felt like it’s something that could definitely happen. It was dealing with a shoe business and it was dealing with a specific period in Japan, that it felt like there could be a really fun, fresh, unique way to tell the exact same story, but to the 2020s. Alan had the really fresh take that I think Denzel Washington, who had always shown a lot of interest in this type of character for probably close to 20 years. Alan was able to look for a fresh take for a movie that had been in development since 1989, here in the states.”

Fox added: “It’s been described by a lot of people as like a morality tale, right? What I think about is this idea of sacrifice never goes out of style. It’s a timeless question of like – What do you do for the people you care about? How far are you willing to go for the people that you consider your closest friend or your brother? What would you actually do for those people in your life? What I tried to look at was like – What does capitalism look and/or feel like now in what we call maybe late-stage capitalism in America? To me, the entertainment business was a really fun way to look at that because there’s the line in the movie – attention is the only currency left. A$AP Rocky’s character idolizes [the character of]

Denzel Washington – looks at him like a God and thinks his life is perfect, while literally his life is crumbling, as we find out in the movie.”

Being a story that has been on Washington’s radar for years, these two creatives also recall how the two-time Oscar-winning actor’s own team helped them lay the groundwork.

Berman said, “Well, it was Denzel Washington’s agent who had called me in August of 2019 with the opportunity that he knew became available to get the rights, and when he called me, he said to me – I have a lottery ticket for you. He said – There’s over 10+ million dollars against this movie in scripts that have been paid for by other studios over the last 20 years. We were always doing it by building it for Denzel. So, when I went to Alan and told him about the original movie and then he came up with the idea for this remake, or as Spike likes to call it, ‘a reimagining,’ which is why he changed it from High and Low to Highest 2 Lowest, Alan was writing it for Denzel. Then, we met with Spike, and Spike came in and made it a Spike Lee joint.”

He added: “One of the things that I think is so cool is that Alan as a filmmaker and me as a producer, for two of the most prolific artists of our time [Washington and Lee] reuniting after 20 years and know that we were the backbone of why that happened is also really exciting.”

Fox said, “The thing that I really took away from Denzel is whenever he had notes for me, he called me at like 3:34am in the morning, because he gets up so early to work. I think he would call thinking I’m going to leave a voicemail or whatever, but the funny thing is that’s when I get up, too. So, it was the strangest experience the first time he called me, because it’s like 3:45am in Los Angeles and I see my phone ring and I’m like – Who is calling me? And it’s literally Denzel Washington telling me an idea he had overnight about the script. And so, that was really interesting to see that level of dedication from someone at the highest of highs. That’s why he’s the greatest actor of all time.”

Even Washington and Lee have expressed their praise for their early collaborators. Washington shared exclusively here, “Producer Jason Berman was an integral part of the success in getting Highest 2 Lowest made.”

BlacKkKlansman Oscar-winning director, Lee, also shared, “Jason Berman is a great asset of the producing team of Highest 2 Lowest. I know he will be successful setting up his own company and looking to the films.”

As I wrapped my conversation with Fox and Berman, after their years working around Hollywood and helping bring Highest 2 Lowest to the world, I was curious of the advice they might have for other creative entrepreneurs out there, who perhaps have been turned down with their ideas, or have had to play the waiting game. What do they feel these understandably frustrated artists would benefit from hearing from them, following their own uphill climb towards success?

Fox said, “Try to take control of your own destiny the best you can. I think too often in life, and I know in Hollywood, but I think in a lot of things in life, we give away our power because we’re so desperate to kind of be accepted by the level we think we want to try to achieve at. I think if I had any advice, it would be betting on yourself as much as you can. Write the script – you can’t send anything to anyone until you write the script. If you can write a small film and make it yourself, make the movie. The further you can get down the road without needing permission from someone else early in the process, the better off you’re going to be.”

Berman, who is now the President of his own A/Vantage Pictures, concluded by saying, “We work in such a subjective world and industry. I think it’s all about conviction. We were the first phase of this reimagining – then Denzel and Spike came in and they made it their own, but I think we had conviction in seeing the potential of what this could be. And in terms of getting A24 to back Alan in being the one to write it, and also just having conviction and the potential of what I saw in the source material – it’s so much about conviction, no matter what other people say.”