‘Devotion’ Box Office Will Benefit Scholarship Fund for Children of Navy Veterans

More special still was a plan hatched by “Devotion” producers Black Label Media — the film finance and production company formed by as formed in 2013 by partners Molly Smith, Trent Luckinbill and Thad Luckinbill, who produced the film alongside Molly’s sister Rachel Smith — to route a portion of the film’s box office to establish the Brown Hudner Navy Scholarship Foundation.

“When Jesse died, Tom and the squadron put together a scholarship fund to put his wife Daisy and daughter Pam through school,” Dillard explains. Brown’s fellow sailors raised today’s equivalent of $24,000 for the family, with Daisy Brown going on to become an educator.

In honor of what began then, the Brown Hudner Navy Scholarship Foundation was formally established using funds from “Devotion” and will award its first scholarships in 2023. The fund is being managed by the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, which has awarded more than $155 million in scholarships to military children over the past 60 years, with the film supporting both organizations.

“We started working on the scholarship fund from the time we greenlit the film in the spring of 2020,” Black Label Media’s Molly Smith tells Variety via email. “Black Label has had a long relationship with Tom Rothman [Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO] and Sony, who agreed to distribute the film and have been amazing supporters if this story. We are all honored to tell this story and honor the sacrifices of these men.”

Read the full story here: ‘Devotion’ Box Office to Fund Scholarship for Navy Veterans’ Families – Variety