Before writing and directing the sailing documentary Mighty Mary, Mary Mazzio knew plenty about fast-moving boats.

The lawyer-turned-filmmaker competed on the U.S. rowing team at the 1992 Summer Olympics, a feat replicated in 2024 by her daughter, Daisy.

All those hours on the water attuned her decades ago to the story at the heart of her new film, which opens in theaters Friday in 15 U.S. markets. The film takes its name from the sailboat whose crew in a 1995 runup to the America’s Cup was made up nearly entirely by women. In an era when Dennis Conner had restored the U.S. to sailing glory, the boldness of the Mighty Mary’s run put a media spotlight on female athletes as intense as that on figures today like the WNBA’s Caitlin Clark.

“Six of my teammates from the Olympic team hopped onto Mighty Mary,” whose crew was chosen via a process crossing a casting call with a fitness competition, Mazzio recalled to Deadline. “I remember being struck by not just how audacious this experiment was. Not only did you have a group of rookies going toe to toe with the best sailors on the planet, but they were women. And the big question was, how are they going to handle the physicality? I knew how strong they were, how much they could lift, what they could do in the gym. Even so, these boats are 55,000 pounds!”

Along will Bill Koch, who conceived of the female experiment as the benefactor of the Mighty Mary, another billionaire sailor with ties to Mighty Mary is Larry Ellison. The Oracle co-founder and backer of Paramount co-founded racing circuit SailGP, which recently landed a TV rights deal with Paramount-owned CBS. Republic Pictures, a label within Paramount, is releasing Mighty Mary outside the U.S. after Skydance Sports initially backed it. AMC Entertainment’s burgeoning distribution arm is handling the domestic release.

Mazzio, whose films include I Am Jane Doe and Underwater Dreams, recently spoke to Deadline about her mission-driven approach, the value of theatrical, and how Elizabeth Banks and Hugh Jackman came aboard to co-narrate Mighty Mary. The conversation has been edited for clairity and length.

DEADLINE: Once you started making films full time, did you put this story on the top of your list of projects you wanted to take on?

MARY MAZZIO: We partnered with ESPN on my second film, Apple Pie, in 2002. It was about athletes and their mothers. And I knew about Dawn Riley, who was the team captain of Mighty Mary. I remember thinking, I’ve got to tell this story. But we already had Grant Hill, who became my producing partner on this, plus Shaquille O’Neal, Drew Bledsoe, Mia Hamm. And so, ESPN was like, ‘Sailing. Alright, we gotta cut that.’ So, Dawn Riley ended up on the cutting-room floor! I said to her, ‘Dawn, I will be back.’ She’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, you’ll be back.’ And here we are.

DEADLINE: Even though you knew the story and the crew members were contemporaries and teammates, were there surprises as you dug into the research and did interviews?

MAZZIO: I think the biggest surprise that came to me was what the men had to say, and the nuance that they brought to this movie. I think the perspective that they brought, you know, the ’90s were, as one of the sailors said, ‘pre-#MeToo.’ So it was a very different time as it relates to women in the workplace, women on the playing field. and for somebody like Paul Cayard, a famous, famous sailor to say, ‘You know, as we think about how we evolve, it’s really important to move away from what our fathers taught us and lean into what our sons are learning.’ When he said that, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I thought, This is so timely today.’

DEADLINE: In telling a 30-year-old story set against a background of gender politics, were there awkward pieces of footage or dilemmas about showing how the women were treated without turning the film into a polemic?

MAZZIO: The men and the male management that are in the film say what their mistakes were. They didn’t know me. They didn’t know how I was going to use that. The fact that they sort of laid that out there and just hoped I accepted the material was extraordinary. You know, Bill Koch, you hear his voice saying, ‘We made a mistake not having a woman in upper management.’ Retrospect and hindsight is always super easy, right? I think about going into the workplace in the 90s as a young lawyer. I remember vividly when I made a comment in a group meeting and nobody said anything. And one of my male colleagues said the very same thing I had said five minutes earlier and it was, ‘Oh, boy, that was really good, really insightful!’ How I handled it was with humor. And I said, ‘I think I just said that five minutes ago, am I chopped liver?’ You do it in a way where you’re not polarizing or you’re not viewed as ‘that difficult woman.’

MAZZIO: We’ve had a relationship with AMC going back about 15 years. I said to Skydance and Paramount that we had spoken with AMC, and they opened up our last eight movies. I also mentioned Hugh and Elizabeth were our narrators. And they said, ‘Well, that’s fantastic because normally we would not put a doc into a theatrical rotation.’ It’s a relationship business, and so we have just maintained the relationship.

DEADLINE: When I heard it was opening in 15 cities, I was expecting Newport, RI, San Diego, maybe Nantucket. But you’ve gone broader than those sailing communities, right?

MAZZIO: We’re in Atlanta, we’re not yet in Texas but hoping to be. At the end of the day, this is not a sailing movie, this is an amazing, extraordinary story that any dad can bring their daughter to.

DEADLINE: Larry Ellison, who is a sailing enthusiast and funder of SailGP, would seem to be a potential booster of your film. Has that connection helped?

MAZZIO: Hugh Jackman owns SailGP Australia. Elizabeth is also a team owner – soccer, but women’s sports. So she was really fired up by the story itself. I don’t know if Larry knows about our project.

DEADLINE: Seriously? Come on! You get very, you get very powerful people on the phone for a living, Mary. You need to find his cell number. Maybe you’ll be the one who brings about a resolution of the Warner Bros. Discovery deal. You’ll be the George Mitchell of the moment – only in Hollywood, not Northern Ireland.

MAZZIO: [Laughs.] I don’t know about that. That’s hilarious.

DEADLINE: Your work has always had goals beyond commercial milestones. What are the goals for Mighty Mary?

MAZZIO: In some of our previews in theaters, young girls have said, ‘That was really empowering,’ using that word. We’re living in a time where the box, especially for girls with social media, defines you by how you look. This message that you can dream and do something ridiculous and impossible, and sometimes if you can swallow your fear – not get rid of your fear, but just say, ‘Let me try. And if I fail, so what?’ I have failed so often, and I remember crying and my mother saying, ‘You can cry for a day. Then tomorrow, you’re gonna wipe off your tears, you’re gonna get right back up and get up to the plate.’ That is a message we do not hear. If you fail, you’re supposed to lie down and stay down. And I think ultimate growth comes from failure. So I want to encourage girls that it’s OK to try. You may not look like a curated spectacle that is sort of being reinforced by society writ large and especially social media, but get out there, get dirty, get ugly, and great things can happen or great lessons can be learned from that exercise.

Get our Breaking News Alerts and Keep your inbox happy.

Comments On Deadline Hollywood are monitored. So don't go off topic, don't impersonate anyone, and don't get your facts wrong.

Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() );