Veteran Film Producer D.J. Gugenheim Left Hollywood to Build a Wellness Empire

Hollywood has always been in the reinvention business, but the most interesting pivot happening right now isn't on a screen.

Kendall Jenner and Zac Efron backed supplement brand Cymbiotika, Diplo turned Run Club into a real community business, while Naomi Watts built Stripes, scaled it and exited clean. This generation isn't chasing endorsement checks; they're building long-term stakes in one of the fastest-growing industries on the planet.

The latest to make that leap is D.J. With credits spanning The Brutalist and The Bourne Legacy, Gugenheim has stepped in as President and Partner at Lillie&Lee, a pet and human wellness brand co-built with his brother, rescue advocate Lee Asher.

In two years, they've more than doubled revenues and grown their social following eightfold with no celebrity backing and no outside investors. We sat down with Gugenheim to find out what a film producer brings to the wellness world, and why he believes the real product was never a supplement, it was trust.

You've spent your career in film and TV. What made you make the leap and what does an entertainment background bring that a traditional business person couldn't?

The WGA and SAG strikes in 2023 were the turning point. Opportunities in film kept getting harder, and one of the worst pieces of collateral damage was the near-total loss of producer first-look deals. When I started in 2003, the list of studio pacts ran pages long, but by 2024, it was one short page.

I'd produced seven films, helped put countless others into production, but I saw the writing on the wall.

I started talking with my brother Lee about next steps. He had the idea: help him build Asher House Wellness — now Lillie&Lee — into a major player in pet and human wellness. I'd already watched CAA and companies like Sugar23 turn talent and story into brand equity. I'd spent 20 years learning how to find audiences and move them. This felt like the clearest extension of everything I already knew.

And the market backs it up. McKinsey puts the global wellness market at $1.8 trillion, with the U.S. alone around $480 billion, growing five to ten percent annually. Eighty-two percent of American consumers now say wellness is a top priority in their daily lives. It's the direction people are moving.

Yes, I had to learn new vocabulary — top-of-funnel, CAC, LTV, Klaviyo, TikTok Shop. But at its core, a film producer is an entrepreneurial job. You're making the impossible happen, on a budget, in a way that makes people feel something. That skillset translates directly. Every lesson from managing a film set, every battle inside a studio environment — it prepared me for this.

We're seeing celebrities move from endorsements to actual ownership in wellness. Is this a genuine shift or just smart money following the trend?

Consumers can see right through a faceless brand. They want to feel part of a story, part of a community. They want to see, with their own eyes, that a product actually works for real people living real lives.

At Lillie&Lee, everything we sell is third-party tested, lab-verified, and US-manufactured. Our no water, no heat, no pressure process preserves the full integrity, viability and flavor of every ingredient. Most products on the market today are extruded and cooked. They can't compete with that quality level.

And that quality is visible. We're not just telling people it works, we're showing them, at scale, in real time. Our subscription base has grown roughly ten percent net every month for the past six months. That's people deciding, month after month, to keep us in their home and their daily routine.

Your brother built one of the most emotionally powerful followings in animal rescue. How do you bottle that authenticity without losing it?

Lee built his following through dedication that's simply unparalleled. No one is more committed to animal rescue and wellness. All I do is amplify what's already there.

In an age of AI-generated content, people are starving for what's real. About a quarter of consumers will unfollow someone the moment they stop feeling honest. Good storytelling is about emotion, clarity and truth. Show the love and care, show the health, show the product working — over and over again. Here we're simply connecting the dots.

What's the story behind a moment at Lillie&Lee that genuinely moved you?

Two separate threads.

First — watching Lee rescue dogs off euthanasia lists. Dogs that had been counted out entirely. Watching them find homes, find joy, find full lives. Dogs like Matilda and Little Bear, who are thriving today because Lee was willing to take on animals that most people won't.

Second — my own health. I've struggled with sleep my whole life. My father was a Holocaust survivor who escaped on the Kindertransport at five years old, traveling across Europe alone with his younger sisters, navigating Nazi guards and bombs in London. He had severe insomnia. I inherited that.

Working on Lillie&Lee, I discovered CBN, CBG, and CBD and they changed my life. We're now about to release a line of products with no THC that combine CBD with CBN or CBG, formulated for real sleep support. I wish they had existed for my dad.

What does winning look like, five years from now?

Winning is "shared wellness" becoming a household category — and Lillie&Lee being the brand families trust for both ends of the leash. It's a world where caring for your dog's health and caring for your own aren't two separate routines. They're one, held to one standard.

Brands like IM8 or Grüns bought their way into the cultural conversation through celebrity equity or private equity backing resulting in massive capital raise and leading to huge media spend with paid creator networks worth tens of millions. Meanwhile, we built our way in by earning community one person at a time.

So, when our brand handles more followers than theirs by nearly three to one, that's not a marketing budget talking, that's trust compounding. And trust is the only thing that makes someone put a product into their own body, or their dog's body, every single day, and keep buying it. That's our moat. I want us to be the most trusted name in that category.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.