Emily Hagins is an Austin based filmmaker, who is most famous for directing the 2006 independent feature film, Pathogen

Pathogen (film)

Pathogen is a 2006 zombie horror independent film written, directed, and produced by Emily Hagins, 12 at the time. Pathogen is one of the first notable feature-length films directed by a teenager in America.-Plot:...

at the age of 12.

Biography

She was born in Philadelphia

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 and moved to Austin

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

, Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 in 1992.

Film career

Since her early childhood, Emily had always had an interest in film and filmmaking. She always had a keen interest in movies, and by second grade had earned the nickname, "The movie girl" by her classmates. Not long after reading J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...

's The Hobbit

The Hobbit

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, better known by its abbreviated title The Hobbit, is a fantasy novel and children's book by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald...

, she saw Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson

Sir Peter Robert Jackson, KNZM is a New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, known for his The Lord of the Rings film trilogy , adapted from the novel by J. R. R...

's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and was inspired to make her own movies. She made 8 short films including It's a Dog's Life and a documentary about an independent film, CrazyInsane Productions' Organic. At age 10 her short-films had drawn the interest of Harry Knowles

Harry Knowles

Harry Knowles is known for his website called Ain't It Cool News. Knowles is a member of the Austin Film Critics Association.-Biography:...

, a critic with Ain't It Cool News

Ain't It Cool News

Ain't It Cool News is a website founded and run by Harry Knowles, dedicated to news, rumors and reviews of upcoming and currently playing films and television projects, with an emphasis on science fiction, fantasy, horror, comic-book and action genres...

. He shared her short, Buddie vs. The Barbies I with director Cameron Crowe

Cameron Crowe

Cameron Bruce Crowe is an American screenwriter and film director. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes....

 who found it "really funny". At Butt-numb-a-thon

Butt-numb-a-thon

Butt-Numb-A-Thon is an annual film marathon held every December since 1999 in Austin, Texas.It is hosted by Harry Knowles of the Ain't it Cool News website in celebration of his birthday. This mini-festival shows 24 hours of vintage films as well as premieres.-Event admission:The marathon is...

 5 she saw her first zombie

Zombie

Zombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...

 film, UNDEAD which inspired her to expand her repertoire. By May 2004, she finished the screenplay for Pathogen

Pathogen (film)

Pathogen is a 2006 zombie horror independent film written, directed, and produced by Emily Hagins, 12 at the time. Pathogen is one of the first notable feature-length films directed by a teenager in America.-Plot:...

, a feature-length zombie film. In August 2005, she won a Texas Filmmakers Production Fund grant to finish post production work on the film. She finished the film which premiered at the Alamo Drafthouse

Alamo Drafthouse

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is an American cinema chain founded in 1997 in Austin, Texas, United States. It has screens in nine locations across Texas and one in Winchester, Virginia...

 and the publicity persuaded organizers to name her the youngest-ever guest-of-honor at CONvergence

Convergence

-Mathematics:* Convergence , refers to the notion that some functions and sequences approach a limit under certain conditions* Convergence , the notion that a sequence of transformations come to the same conclusion, no matter what order they are performed in.-Natural sciences:*Convergence ,...

 2007 in Bloomington

Bloomington, Minnesota

Bloomington is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota in Hennepin County. Located on the north bank of the Minnesota River above its confluence with the Mississippi River, Bloomington lies at the heart of the southern...

, Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

. Vacdoomed Productions released a documentary about Hagins, Zombie Girl: The Movie

Zombie Girl: The Movie

Zombie Girl: The Movie is an American documentary about the making of the 2006 film Pathogen which was directed by Emily Hagins, who was twelve years-old at the time.- Plot :...

profiling her production of Pathogen.

After Pathogen

After finishing Pathogen, Hagins started the preparations for her second feature-length film, and in 2009 premiered in Austin. The Retelling is a supernatural murder-mystery about two young kids and their blind grandfather.
Hagins' latest production is the vampire comedy My Sucky Teen Romance, which had its world premiere at South by Southwest

South by Southwest

South by Southwest is an Austin, Texas based company dedicated to planning conferences, trade shows, festivals and other events. Their current roster of annual events include: SXSW Music, SXSW Film, SXSW Interactive, SXSWedu, and SXSWeco and take place every spring in Austin, Texas, United States...

. The film was partially funded by crowdsourcing via the website Indiegogo.com.

On 10/19/2011 Emily Hagins got her first theatrical distribution deal with MPI Media for her third feature film - My Sucky Teen Romance.

In October 2011, it was announced that she had joined Rooster Teeth Productions

Rooster Teeth Productions

Rooster Teeth Productions is a production group from Austin, Texas that specializes in the creation of live action shorts, animated peices and machinima, or films created using real-time, interactive engines from computer and video games. The name Rooster Teeth is a euphemism for Cockbite, an...

.