CNN
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Eva Longoria is being praised as one of the people who made the “John Wick” franchise possible, and she now says she didn’t fully realize at first what she was doing.
In an interview with Business Insider, Longoria talked about investing in the 2014 hit movie after the budget fell short before filming began.
Co-director Chad Stahelski had told the publication about how co-director David Leitch and star Keanu Reeves had invested their own money, and one of the film’s producers, Basil Iwanyk, had maxed out three credit cards trying to get the revenge-action movie made.
Longoria, Stahelski said, “came to the rescue, and she provided the gap financing, literally less than 24 hours before we had to lock the doors on the movie and walk away” after talent agency CAA, which was putting the financing together, offered some of their clients the opportunity to invest.
“My bankroll was very new, and it was a lot of money, and I was like, ‘So how does it work?’ I had no idea,” Longoria now says. “I would love to say I was an investment genius and I just knew and I calculated my risk. No, none of that.”
She confirmed the information about CAA, explaining “An agent, and he wasn’t even my agent, he called me and said, ‘You got money, you should put your money here.’”
“And I didn’t even know how a movie was made,” Longoria said. “I was like, ‘What do you mean gap financing?’”
It ignited a passion in Longoria, who has gone on to produce multiple projects.
She said she’s still benefitting financially from her initial investment.
“My husband is friends with the head of Lionsgate, and he’ll say to him sometimes, ‘I see we wrote a check to Eva this week,’” she said. “But the geniuses were Chad and David and the star that was Keanu. I just wrote the check.”
