How Patrick Marino Is Rewriting the Script on Media
[…] The post How Patrick Marino Is Rewriting the Script on Media first appeared on SHEEN Magazine.
Black News 
In business, transformational leaders have the ability to look at what has been ignored and see an opportunity. For Patrick Marino, that ability is how he built a career. From the construction of successful real estate portfolios, to the empowerment of new voices in media, Marino is a walking testament to this approach. While he has cooled on his own life as an investor, Marino’s world as a media mogul is heating up with a goal to inject the entertainment industry with bold content, smart partnerships, and genre-bending films that seek to blend the old with the new.
Long before he turned his eye to Hollywood, his reputation as a businessman was well established. Growing up in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, he learned from his father (real estate investor Michael Marino) about how market cycles – and their ignored assets – could be leveraged to deliver extraordinary returns.
“Everything I learned about business started with watching my father work,” recalls Marino.
After graduating from Coastal Carolina University, Marino capitalized on this approach with distressed finance and real estate, eventually creating M Group Companies. Marino’s skills and intuition would ultimately deliver a portfolio of over one billion dollars in commercial assets. But for Marino, this was not going to be where he stopped. Instead, he took his experience in understanding the value of human connection and channeled that into cultural storytelling.
Enter: Action Park Media.
Co-founded with actor/director Kevin Connolly, Marino sunk his teeth into this vertically-integrated production studio with fervor. While Connolly contributes to the creative input, Marino provides the guidance on business, partnership, and finance. The pair came into this with the understanding that APM is not just a place to create, but it is to be a studio that produces content that truly connects.
With connection as their guide, APM kicked-off with podcasts Victory: The Podcast and No Gruffs Given. Adding to that, APM hosts others including the true crime podcast The Dossier and lifestyle podcast Scheananigans with Scheana Shay.
Not satisfied with just podcasts, Marino and APM stepped into feature films with their first production Lice. The film, which recently wrapped production in Canada, is described as “the mash-up that ‘The Breakfast Club’ and ‘Lord of the Flies’ always wanted to be.”
The anticipated teen drama horror film combines elements of parody with an homage to the classics from the 1980s.
Set in a high school in Long Island that has been taken over by a parasitic infestation, the military is brought in to quarantine the school, but the students (driven mad by the infestation) turn on each other in their struggle for survival. With this film, production designers worked diligently to create a nostalgic, classic feel that emulates 1980’s teen dramas and horror favorites.
The first film’s genre aside, Marino and APM have been carefully positioned as more than just a producer of horror-based content. Other projects in the works include a sports docuseries, with director Steve James, that is centered around inductees to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
As for Marino’s larger vision for APM, his core philosophy for both business and entertainment guides him so that he can continue to identify what may not be obvious to other executives in his field. Here, Marino banks on his lifelong, cultivated, value-add mindset to continue to search for the hidden opportunities.
The post How Patrick Marino Is Rewriting the Script on Media first appeared on SHEEN Magazine.
