Incubate founder Joey Horvitz is a seasoned producer, filmmaker, storyteller and ideator. He has over twenty-five years of entertainment industry experience and is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His expertise includes development, production, distribution, brand integration, marketing, and talent relations. In 2019, Joey established Incubate with the mission of seeking out and presenting stories of meaning and purpose.
Just out of college, Horvitz co-founded Cutting Edge Entertainment, a full-service production company. From fundraising and film development to production, post, and marketing, he immersed himself in the film business and learned by doing. When Cutting Edge entered the global film distribution space, Horvitz added international film licensing to his growing list of skills and abilities.
After spending his twenties and thirties traveling the globe, attending all major film festivals and markets, Horvitz founded Contagious Entertainment. At Contagious, Horvitz raised capital for a slate of projects including the Oscar-nominated film, The Illusionist.
Following Contagious Horvitz switched focus to the commercial advertising sector. Here he worked closely with high-visibility agencies and brands, including, Nike, Wieden+Kennedy, Target, Leo Burnett, Verizon, McCann Erickson, Lowe’s, Ogilvy, Hardees, and Subaru.
Circa 2010, Horvitz co-founded GeekNation, a one-stop shop for all things geek culture and popular entertainment.
In 2012, as the media landscape was shifting, Lexus, in partnership with The Weinstein Company, entered the original content space and selected Horvitz to spearhead this initiative. Over six years he produced four seasons of what became known as Lexus Short Films. Here Horvitz was charged with scouring the globe for emerging artists and bringing their captivating stories to an international audience. In its fourth season the program received over 6,000 submissions from 175 countries. Lexus Short Films became the model for brand-supported content, securing hundreds of awards internationally and millions of views globally across a wide range of platforms.
The remarkable success of Lexus Short Films led Horvitz to launch and run a short-film division at the company. As the program was preparing a new slate of films, the Weinstein scandal broke, bringing this trailblazing initiative to an abrupt end.
Down but not out, Horvitz emerged from the scandal with greater strength, clarity, and determination. In 2019, he launched Incubate. Shortly afterward, a global pandemic hit, stopping the world in its tracks, Incubate included. However, during this downtime, a seed of another idea was germinating…
The Art of Change is a docuseries exploring the idea that art, through its countless expressions, has the innate capacity to effect meaningful change.
Joey is a native Angeleno who sees beauty and power in the art of storytelling. In his spare time, he can be found hiking barefoot or balancing on a slackline between two trees. You see the Force runs strong with Horvitz as he strives to be the best version of himself, infusing passion and purpose into his creative pursuits, one step at a time.