September, 2026.- Tristan McClain started his career in music as a producer and engineer at Tree Sound Studios in Atlanta, working with artists including André 3000, T.I., Justin Bieber, Eminem, and Killer Mike. Being around artists operating at that level taught him how much intention goes into building a creative identity and connecting an artist’s story with an audience. As he transitioned into film and television, editing became his entry point into a different kind of storytelling. He helped launch Tales on BET with Irv Gotti and Uncensored on TV One as an editor. Editing taught him that having great material isn’t necessarily the same as having a great story.
In this interview, McClain discusses Sunnyboy’s expansion into Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward. The expansion has a personal connection for the studio—founders Harold Hayes and Craig S. Phillips both have roots in Atlanta. What excites McClain most is the opportunity to develop projects from within the community, to find stories organically, build relationships earlier, and create opportunities for the people closest to those stories to participate in telling them.
McClain also reflects on the unscripted slate. He is interested in stories where access can change your understanding of something you thought you already knew. He is drawn to specificity. The more specific you are about a person, a community, or a moment, the more universal the story can become. We don’t need to flatten culture to make something accessible to a broad audience.
On success, McClain notes that it isn’t about having the biggest slate. It’s about building a slate that actually gets made.
1. From Curating Content for Musicians and Brands to Film Strategy: You’ve spent over a decade curating and producing content for musicians, brands, television, and film. How does that diverse background shape your approach to film strategy and development at Sunnyboy?
I started my career in music as a producer and engineer at Tree Sound Studios in Atlanta. That experience gave me the opportunity to work with artists including André 3000, T.I., Justin Bieber, Eminem and Killer Mike. Being around artists operating at that level taught me how much intention goes into building a creative identity and connecting an artist’s story with an audience.
As I transitioned into film and television, editing became my entry point into a different kind of storytelling. I helped launch Tales on BET with Irv Gotti and Uncensored on TV One as an editor. Both series required finding compelling narratives within the lives, music and experiences of culturally significant artists and public figures. That work taught me how to shape real experiences into stories that could connect with a broad audience without losing what made the subjects distinctive.
Editing had a huge impact on how I think. You learn very quickly that having great material isn’t necessarily the same as having a great story. You have to understand perspective, pacing, character and what you’re ultimately trying to say. Whether I was building a record, finding the story through footage or producing a project from the ground up, the common thread was learning how to take individual pieces and shape them into something that makes an audience feel something.
As I moved further into producing, I became just as interested in figuring out how to get those stories made. Producing wasn’t always a title for me—it was a necessity. If something needed to happen to move a project forward, I learned how to make it happen. Over time, that grew into thinking about the bigger picture: Who is the audience? Why does this story need to exist? Who is the right creative partner? How do we package it, finance it and ultimately get it to market?
That’s how I approach film strategy and development at SunnyBoy today. Storytelling is still the passion at the center of it. Strategy is about creating the pathway that allows those stories to reach an audience.
2. The Atlanta Expansion: Sunnyboy is expanding with an office in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward. What makes Atlanta the right location for the studio’s unscripted growth, and what does the city’s creative community offer that Los Angeles doesn’t?
Atlanta has been a production hub for a long time, but what’s particularly exciting to me is that there’s still so much opportunity here on the development and ownership side.
The expansion also has a personal connection for SunnyBoy. Our founders, Harold Hayes and Craig S. Phillips, both have roots in Atlanta, so establishing a presence here isn’t simply about entering another production market. It’s an opportunity to bring the company’s experience, relationships and infrastructure back to a city that helped shape them.
There is an incredible concentration of music, culture, entrepreneurs, athletes, artists and personalities whose stories have influenced the world. There’s also a creative community behind those stories that has been growing together for years. People who started out making things together are now producers, directors, writers, cinematographers, executives and company owners. The infrastructure isn’t only stages and crews anymore. There are people here with ideas, relationships and projects of their own that deserve to be developed here.
That’s part of what makes this moment interesting for SunnyBoy. We don’t want Atlanta to be somewhere we only come to produce something after it has already been developed. There’s an opportunity to develop projects from within the community—to find stories organically, build relationships earlier and create opportunities for the people closest to those stories to participate in telling them.
I don’t look at Atlanta and Los Angeles as one replacing the other. SunnyBoy’s history and relationships in Los Angeles remain incredibly important. Atlanta gives us another perspective and another creative ecosystem. For unscripted especially, proximity matters. Access and trust can be the difference between having an interesting subject and having a great documentary.
3. Unscripted as a Natural Extension: Sunnyboy has been producing content for major studios for two decades, including projects like Superman, A Minecraft Movie, and Project Hail Mary. Why is unscripted the right next step for the studio, and what’s the biggest difference in developing unscripted versus scripted?
Originals are less of a departure from what SunnyBoy has been doing and more of an expansion of it. The company has spent more than two decades working alongside major studios and filmmakers, producing content around some very large properties. We’ve built production infrastructure, creative relationships and an understanding of what it takes to execute at a high level.
The opportunity now is to move further upstream—not only helping execute someone else’s vision, but identifying stories, developing intellectual property and building projects from the beginning.
An important part of that expansion is assembling the right team. Jay Allen has joined SunnyBoy as Vice President of Unscripted, bringing his experience in developing and producing documentary features, limited series and unscripted formats. Nikki has also joined as Director of Talent Acquisition and Development, helping us identify creative partners, cultivate relationships and connect emerging opportunities with the company. Together, we’re building a development structure that allows us to discover projects, shape them creatively and think strategically about where they belong in the marketplace.
Unscripted is particularly exciting because the development process is different. With scripted, you can begin with a blank page. In documentary and unscripted, the story already exists somewhere. Our job is to find the point of view, earn the access and determine why this is the moment to tell it.
That’s what I love about it. You can have an incredible subject, but access changes everything. The person everyone thinks they know may have an entirely different story once you get beyond the public version of them. That’s often where the film is.
4. The Unscripted Slate: You’re leading film strategy and development as the studio builds a multi-project originals slate. What kind of stories are you looking to tell in the unscripted space, and what do you think is missing from the current documentary landscape?
I’m interested in stories where access can change your understanding of something you thought you already knew.
That can be music, culture, sports, crime, business or a single person’s life. I’m less interested in saying, “This is an important documentary,” than I am in asking, “Would I want to watch this if I knew nothing about the subject?” The best projects can do both. They can have cultural significance and still be incredibly entertaining.
I’m also drawn to specificity. I’ve found that the more specific you are about a person, a community or a moment, the more universal the story can become. We don’t need to flatten culture to make something accessible to a broad audience. And sometimes the best way to find that specificity is to develop a project closer to where the story actually lives.
That’s especially exciting about being in Atlanta. There are filmmakers and creatives here who aren’t waiting for someone to arrive and tell them what their community’s stories are. They have their own ideas and perspectives. Part of building our slate is creating more opportunities to identify those projects and develop alongside the people who understand those worlds firsthand.
I think there is also room in the documentary landscape for more surprises. Audiences are sophisticated. They’ve seen the traditional rise-fall-redemption structure many times. I’m interested in finding the perspective that makes someone say, “I had no idea that was the story.”
That’s something we’re actively looking for as we build the slate: not simply recognizable subjects, but a reason for SunnyBoy to be the company telling that particular story.
5. “Welcome to the A” and the Studio’s Documentary Identity: Sunnyboy received an Emmy nomination for Welcome to the A: 50 Years of Hip Hop in Atlanta. How does that project set the tone for the type of unscripted work you want to develop, and what did you learn from making it?
Welcome to the A was special to me for reasons that went beyond the project itself. I had the opportunity to make it alongside friends and collaborators I’ve known for more than a decade — people I watched start their careers in this industry who are now building and owning their own companies here in Atlanta. There was something full circle about coming together at this stage in our careers to tell a story about the city and culture that helped shape all of us.
It also reminded me that Atlanta’s creative community didn’t suddenly appear because the industry began paying more attention to the city. People here have been collaborating, creating opportunities for one another and building together for a long time. What’s changing is the position many of those people are now in. The same people who were coming up together are increasingly in positions to originate ideas, lead productions, build companies and make decisions about which stories get told.
That experience reinforced something that’s become central to how I think about documentary: relationships and proximity to a culture change the way you tell its story. Atlanta’s contribution to hip-hop is enormous, but the project wasn’t simply about documenting accomplishments. It was about capturing the people, places, relationships and energy that made those accomplishments possible. When you have people behind the camera who have genuine relationships with that world, there is a familiarity and trust that shows up in the work.
The Emmy nomination was meaningful, but what I carry forward most is the value of building with people. Some of the relationships you develop early in your career can become the creative infrastructure around you ten years later.
That’s something I want reflected in SunnyBoy’s documentary identity. Wherever we’re telling a story, I want us to get close enough to the people and the culture that the audience feels like they’re being allowed into a room they normally wouldn’t have access to.
6. The Sunnyboy Originals Ambition: The studio is “ushering in a new era of originals.” What does success look like for Sunnyboy in the unscripted space in the next 2-3 years, and what’s the biggest risk you need to manage?
Success isn’t about having the biggest slate. It’s about building a slate that actually gets made.
There are thousands of great ideas sitting in decks and development folders. We’re trying to build the infrastructure around our originals so that we can move projects from idea to development, financing, production and ultimately distribution in a sustainable way.
I also want that growth to create meaningful opportunities for Atlanta’s film community. Success shouldn’t only be measured by the projects SunnyBoy gets into the marketplace. It should also be reflected in the filmmakers and creatives who gain opportunities through those projects—not only to work on productions, but to bring forward their own ideas, contribute their perspectives and grow into positions of creative leadership.
Over the next two to three years, I’d like SunnyBoy to have several recognizable original properties in the marketplace, strong repeat relationships with buyers and financing partners, and a reputation among filmmakers and subjects that if they bring us something special, we know how to build around it.
The biggest risk is probably growth itself. It’s easy to become excited about opportunities and develop too many things at once. I’m very conscious of making sure we’re not confusing activity with progress. I’d rather put real resources behind the right projects than have a huge slate where nothing moves.
Ultimately, the goal is for people to begin recognizing a SunnyBoy project before they even see the logo — not because everything looks the same, but because there’s a level of access, craft and point of view that connects the work.
That’s the company we’re building toward.
