The Mission of Nine Cats Productions
Stories That Challenge Today.
Echo Tomorrow.
Transcend multiple Lifetimes!
Nine Cats Productions is a visionary independent film company dedicated to sparking meaningful change through timely, unconventional storytelling — narratives crafted to resonate deeply across generations and endure far beyond the screen. We challenge conventions, amplify marginalized voices, and push cinematic boundaries to ignite dialogue, foster empathy, and illuminate truths in an ever-evolving world.
Founded and led by Nick Sakai, an acclaimed actor, director, and producer with decades of experience across television, feature film, theater, and new media, Nine Cats draws on his proven track record and unwavering passion for transformative stories. From his award-winning shorts and directorial debut Ms. Kiss to producing resonant projects like The Pardon (now festival-bound and expanding into a series) and collaborations with talents from Breaking Bad, Dexter, and beyond, Nick brings a sharp eye for cultural nuance, emotional authenticity, and bold genre reinvention. Under his leadership, Nine Cats is building a diverse slate of three narrative features — Borderline, Luke and Emma, Sniper — and the gripping periodical drama The Pardon, each designed to deliver both immediate cultural impact and lasting legacy.
We don’t just make films. We create enduring assets — stories that provoke thought today and echo tomorrow.
At Nine Cats Productions, we focus on long-term value creation — not short-term, high-risk bets
Just as investing in ExxonMobil stock over decades yields significantly higher ROI than gambling on a single oil rig, film investors can find greater stability and upside in the sustained growth of a production company rather than a one-off project. A diversified slate strategy allows for compounding creative and financial returns over time.
While major studios chase tentpole spectacles — often at enormous risk — Nine Cats Productions pursues a smarter, more sustainable path.
Nine Cats Productions targets the lower mid-budget sweet spot: lean, high-quality productions built for critical acclaim, festival momentum, targeted theatrical/streaming deals, and strong ancillary revenue (VOD, international, library value). Our diversified slate — three narrative features (Borderline, Luke and Emma, Sniper) plus the binge-worthy episodic drama The Pardon — spreads risk while building compounding assets: intellectual property libraries, ongoing creative partnerships, brand equity, data-driven audience insights, and repeat revenue streams from catalog performance.
Cinema remains one of the most underrated — and misunderstood — asset classes in alternative investing. When approached with discipline, diversification, and a focus on resonant, culturally timely stories, production companies can generate meaningful, long-term upside — far outpacing the volatility of single-project bets. Read more about this here on LinkedIn
Our current projects
Best Story Telling
Synopsis
Borderline is a gripping, high-stakes legal drama that delves deeply into themes of immigration, justice, and the abuse of systemic power in modern America.
The story centers on Alberto Arturo, a brilliant recent graduate from a top law school, whose life unravels in an instant. After a celebratory night, Alberto is involved in a tragic car accident while driving home — one that claims the life of the daughter of a powerful politician. Though evidence clearly shows Alberto was not at fault, his expired visa status instantly turns him into the ideal target: vulnerable, immigrant, and without the full protections of citizenship.
An ambitious district attorney seizes the opportunity to build a high-profile case, using Alberto as a scapegoat to advance a tough-on-crime, anti-immigration political agenda. What begins as a straightforward accident investigation spirals into a fierce courtroom showdown, where the truth is buried under layers of political pressure, media sensationalism, and institutional bias.
Told through a masterful structure of flashbacks interwoven with present-day trial scenes, Borderline gradually reveals hidden motives, suppressed evidence, and the moral gray areas that complicate every character's decisions. As Alberto fights for his freedom and reputation, the film exposes how the legal system can be weaponized against the marginalized — while forcing audiences to question who is truly guilty in a world where power often determines justice.
With intense courtroom tension reminiscent of The Lincoln Lawyer and the ethical confrontations of A Few Good Men, Borderline delivers a timely, emotionally resonant narrative. It powerfully illuminates the immigrant experience in the face of systemic injustice, the personal cost of ambition in public office, and the fragile line between accountability and exploitation.
This project stands as one of NineCatsProductions' flagship features — a story that not only entertains through sharp legal intrigue and character-driven drama but also sparks vital conversations about fairness, identity, and power in today's divided society. Investing in Borderline means backing a film with both commercial appeal and lasting cultural impact, contributing to the long-term value NineCatsProductions is building as a diversified, forward-thinking production company.
Synopisis
Luke and Emma is a deeply moving coming-of-age drama set against the quiet backdrop of 1986 small-town America — a tender, intimate story of first love that quietly confronts the enduring shadows of race, identity, and inherited prejudice.
The film opens with a simple, unguarded moment: <
Luke, a thoughtful mixed-race teenager, and Emma, a kind white girl from the same town, find themselves waiting together at a local gas station while their parents finish errands inside. In that brief, stolen slice of time — sharing small talk, shy glances, and the kind of easy laughter that only exists before the world teaches caution — something pure and unspoken begins to bloom between them.
Yet the adults around them carry the weight of a different era. Subtle glances, clipped words, and unspoken tensions between their families reveal the invisible lines that still divide even this seemingly ordinary Midwestern community.
What starts as an innocent connection becomes a powerful lens through which the film explores how deeply cultural attitudes, family legacies, and the social climate of the 1980s shape young lives — often before they even understand why.
Expanding from the award-winning proof-of-concept short Luke & Emma and a Gas Station on Franklin Ave, the feature-length version widens the canvas: we follow Luke and Emma as their friendship deepens, as they navigate first crushes, small rebellions, and the painful realization that love doesn’t always exist in a vacuum. The story delicately balances nostalgic warmth with unflinching honesty, showing how the personal is always political — and how the echoes of 1980s racial tensions still resonate in today’s America.
With authentic performances, period-rich detail, and a gentle yet unflinching gaze, Luke and Emma captures the bittersweet beauty of young love while inviting audiences worldwide to reflect on generational bias, the slow work of unlearning prejudice, and the possibility of a future where connection is no longer bound by inherited divisions.
The proof of concept short film version was recognized by more than 20 national and international film festivals.
Synopsis
Sniper is a sweeping, emotionally resonant World War II drama that bridges generations through a modern-day discovery, illuminating one of the most heroic yet overlooked chapters in American history: the story of Japanese American soldiers who fought with unmatched valor while their families endured internment. The film opens in present-day Hawaii, where Kevin, a man grappling with loss, returns to salvage his family's fire-ravaged home. Amid the ashes, he uncovers a hidden attic containing a single, miraculously untouched painting — a vivid depiction of a soldier in fierce combat. The figure is Kevin’s late grandfather, Dan, a Japanese American man classified as an “enemy alien” after Pearl Harbor, stripped of rights and dignity overnight. As Kevin pieces together the painting’s origins, the narrative powerfully shifts to the past. We follow Dan’s extraordinary journey: from the humiliation of forced relocation and internment camps to his defiant enlistment in the historic 442nd Regimental Combat Team — the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in U.S. military history, with its famous motto “Go For Broke.” (Often incorporating the battle-hardened 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd earned 21 Medals of Honor, thousands of Purple Hearts, and countless other commendations through brutal campaigns in Italy, France, and Germany.) Dan also served alongside the pioneering Varsity Victory Volunteers, a group of Japanese American university students from Hawaii who volunteered for labor service in early 1942 to prove their loyalty when military enlistment was still barred. At the emotional core of Dan’s wartime experience lies a forbidden and courageous love story with Annie, a white American woman who chooses love over convention. Defying societal prejudice and wartime paranoia, Annie joins Dan and his family inside the internment camp — a quiet act of rebellion that underscores themes of loyalty, identity, and human connection in the face of systemic injustice. Through intense battlefield sequences, intimate camp moments, and the quiet heroism of those who fought prejudice on two fronts, Sniper weaves a multi-generational tale of sacrifice, redemption, and rediscovered legacy. Kevin’s investigation forces him — and the audience — to confront buried truths about America’s past and their lingering echoes today. Blending the epic scope of classic war films with the personal intimacy of family drama, Sniper honors the real-life Nisei soldiers who proved their patriotism under the harshest circumstances while exposing the contradictions of a nation at war with both external enemies and its own ideals.
Synopisis
The Pardon is a taut, high-tension family crime drama that plunges into the raw intersections of guilt, loyalty, survival, and the fragile bonds that hold — or shatter — when secrets become deadly.
At its center is Lily, a sharp, ambitious Ivy League business student whose polished exterior hides a double life. To sustain her lifestyle amid the glittering excess of elite college party culture, she quietly exploits the scene’s vulnerabilities — until one reckless night with Tom Fitzgerald, the charismatic son of a powerful U.S. Senator, ends in catastrophe. Tom collapses from sudden cardiac arrest, initially blamed on drugs. The truth is far more complicated: an undiagnosed genetic condition triggered the fatal event. But in the panicked aftermath, facts no longer matter — perception and political fallout do.
Terrified of exposure and ruin, Lily and her closest friends make a desperate choice: they dispose of the body and vanish into the night. With every door closing, Lily has nowhere left to turn except her estranged stepfather, Pops Colvin — a weathered, street-smart man already living on borrowed time, evading his own past while desperately seeking another safe house to disappear into.
Joined by Lily’s fierce and devoted lover Diana, the unlikely trio forms a fractured, makeshift family on the run — bound not by blood alone, but by shared secrets, mutual dependence, and the terror of what happens if any one of them breaks. Their flight across state lines draws the dogged pursuit of Frank Williams, Pops’ unrelenting probation officer, a man who senses the deeper truth and refuses to let the trail go cold. As law enforcement closes in and powerful political forces quietly pull strings to protect their own, the group faces impossible choices: protect the people they love at any cost, or face the consequences of the lies that now define them.
Layered with moral ambiguity, pulse-quickening suspense, and intimate character drama, The Pardon asks unflinching questions: How far will ordinary people go when survival is on the line? Can loyalty survive betrayal? And is true forgiveness possible when the price of pardon is paid in blood and compromise?
This gripping series stands as the ambitious periodical drama in NineCatsProductions’ slate — a serialized story built for binge-worthy tension, complex relationships, and timely resonance. With its blend of crime-thriller momentum and deep emotional stakes, The Pardon delivers the kind of addictive, character-driven storytelling that keeps audiences returning week after week, exploring the dark edges of privilege, family, and the human instinct to survive.
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