Matt Smith and Dan Gedman went to the same high school in Kansas City, but they became best friends when they joined the same fraternity at the University of Kansas.
“We both loved movies,” Gedman says. “We went to see ‘Hoop Dreams’ together and there was a great art theater in Lawrence that would play things like ‘Fargo’ and ‘Pulp Fiction.’ We ended up playing a lot less pickup basketball and watching a lot more movies than the guys we lived with.”
Fast forward a few decades and Smith and Gedman are trading the prairies of Kansas for the funky pleasures of Austin, Texas where the producing partners premiered not one, but two films at this year’s SXSW. There’s “The Saviors,” a comedy-thriller a couple (Adam Scott, Danielle Deadwyler) who grow suspicious of the Middle Eastern brother and sister (Theo Rossi, Nazanin Boniadi) renting their guest house. Smith and Gedman also produced “Wishful Thinking,” the story of a couple (Maya Hawke, Lewis Pullman) in Portland, Oregon, whose relationship troubles may be triggering a global collapse. The off-beat features are the first two projects from Highway 10, a company that the business partners launched in 2024.
“These films represent the last two years of our work, so to have them premiere back-to-back is exciting and terrifying,” says Smith. “They show what we are looking for as a company. We are genre agnostic, but we want films that have big central hooks or big ideas. We are making smaller indie movies that have big stakes attached to them.”
Smith, a producer whose credits MGM’s musical remake of “Valley Girl” and two entries in the “Step Up” franchise, and Gedman, a former music video director for the likes of Kendrick Lamar andTech N9ne,, had just finished raising money to start Highway 10 when they came across Kevin Hamedani and Travis Betz’s script for “The Saviors.”
“It instantly jumped off the page,” Gedman says.
For Smith, the movie was just the kind of movie mashup that he’d always wanted to produce.
“It was like a mixture of all these sensibilities — Tarantino and PTA, who really turned us on to cinema, and Spielberg, whose movies we grew up watching,” he says. “But it’s also asking questions about immigration and the way that foreigners are treated in this country that feel sadly relevant.”
“The Saviors” was shot in Altadena, with filming completed just before last year’s Los Angeles wildfires. In fact, the owners of the home where Scott and Deadwyler’s characters live had to use footage from the movie to get their insurance paid out when their guest house was destroyed by the fire.
“Wishful Thinking” shot in Portland, Oregon during 2025. The film completed a whirlwind post-production, with a final cut delivered just days before SXSW. Gedman and Smith were drawn to the project, which was written and directed by Graham Parkes.
“Graham and Lewis are best friends, so he wrote it to showcase Lewis’s talent and then the stars aligned because Maya was our first choice and she agreed to do it almost immediately,” Smith says.
“It’s grounded in great performances from wonderful actors telling a relatable story,” says Gedman.
Highway 10’s name is a reference to the road that connects Kansas City with the University of Kansas where Gedman and Smith’s forged their cinematic bond. Though the dual SXSW premieres feel like the culmination of a long journey, Highway 10 hopes this is just a taste of what’s to come. The pair hope to shoot a film called “When a Stranger Venmos,” a thriller about a young woman in the internet age who is offered a chance to complete offbeat challenges for money. They have several other projects that they are considering.
“Dan and I mostly want give people a good night at the movies,” says Smith. “That’s what we’re focused on delivering.”
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