Nina Jacobson
Encyclopedia
Nina Jacobson is an American
film executive who, until July 2006, was president of the Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group
, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company
. With Dawn Steel
, Gail Berman
and Sherry Lansing
, she was one of the last of a handful of women to head a Hollywood film studio since the 1980s.
, graduating in 1987. She began her film career as a documentary researcher. She joined Disney in 1987 as a story analyst but was dismissed in a management change. In 1988, she joined Silver Pictures
as director of film development. She was later head of development at MacDonald/Parkes Productions before she joined Universal Pictures
as senior vice president of production. There, she took part in the development and production of such projects as Twelve Monkeys
and Dazed and Confused
.
Later, Jacobson became a senior film executive at DreamWorks SKG where she was responsible for developing What Lies Beneath
. She also takes credit for the idea behind DreamWorks' first animated feature Antz
. Speaking of her mode of working while listening to pitches for new films, she said, "We start with the obligatory chat about the weather, traffic, sports or politics. Then somebody concludes the chitchat (usually me) and the writer does his or her schpiel. The 'dog and pony.' The desired outcome is for me to love the story and want to buy it. But a big part of my job is to pass. I leap only once every six to eight weeks."
, Touchstone Pictures
and Hollywood Pictures
. Among her projects as studio executive were The Sixth Sense
, Remember the Titans
, Pearl Harbor, The Princess Diaries
, The Chronicles of Narnia
, and the Pirates of the Caribbean
franchise. For her efforts at helping expand the role of women in the entertainment industry, Women in Film awarded her the Crystal Award in 2003. In 2005, Forbes Magazine named Jacobson one of the "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women" in acknowledgement of her success.
Closely associated with film director M. Night Shyamalan
at Disney (besides The Sixth Sense, she also worked with him on Unbreakable, Signs
and The Village
), she and Shyamalan clashed during pre-production of his 2006 film, Lady in the Water
. Shyamalan left the studio after Jacobson and others became, in Shyamalan's eyes, overly critical of his script, which would eventually be produced by Warner Bros.
Shyamalan is quoted in a book about the difficult period that he "had witnessed the decay of her creative vision right before his own wide-open eyes. She didn't want iconoclastic directors. She wanted directors who made money." In her own defense, Jacobson said, "in order to have a Hollywood relationship more closely approximate a real relationship, you have to have a genuine back and forth of the good and the bad. Different people have different ideas about respect. For us, being honest is the greatest show of respect for a filmmaker."
, studio chief for The Walt Disney Company. Apparently as part of a studio restructuring, she was replaced by Oren Aviv, marketing chief of the studio. Soon after she was fired, Jacobson remarked, "There are two kinds of people in this job: the ones who think they'll have it forever and the ones who know they won't." She said she had treated her own job at Disney "as a privilege, not an entitlement." Among her last projects as production executive was The Game Plan
, a family comedy released in late September 2007. The film opened number one in its first week at the box office and held the top spot through the second week of release.
. Color Force signed a three-year "first-look" production deal with DreamWorks in December 2006. The first feature project released in theaters was Diary of a Wimpy Kid
.
Jacobson will be producing bestseller The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
, alongside the author, who will be screenwriting. The film is set for release on March 23, 2012. She is currently producing One Day
.
formed Out There, a collection of gay and lesbian entertainment industry activists.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film executive who, until July 2006, was president of the Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group
Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group
Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, Inc. is a corporation which develops scripts and oversees theatrical production for The Walt Disney Company's production companies and imprints. The Group, one of Hollywood's major film studios, is based at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California...
, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
. With Dawn Steel
Dawn Steel
Dawn Steel was one of the first women to run a major Hollywood film studio. She was born as Dawn Spielberg in New York City and raised in the suburb Great Neck, Long Island. Her father changed the family name.- Career :Dawn Steel attended New York University but did not graduate...
, Gail Berman
Gail Berman
Gail Berman is the former president of entertainment at Fox Broadcasting Company and the former president of Viacom's Paramount Pictures.She graduated from the University of Maryland in 1978...
and Sherry Lansing
Sherry Lansing
Sherry Lansing is a former actress and American film studio executive. She is former CEO of Paramount Pictures, and when president of production at 20th Century Fox was the first woman to head a Hollywood studio In 1996, she became the first woman named Pioneer of the Year by the Foundation of...
, she was one of the last of a handful of women to head a Hollywood film studio since the 1980s.
Early career
Jacobson studied at Brown UniversityBrown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, graduating in 1987. She began her film career as a documentary researcher. She joined Disney in 1987 as a story analyst but was dismissed in a management change. In 1988, she joined Silver Pictures
Silver Pictures
Silver Pictures is a film production company founded by Hollywood producer Joel Silver during 1985. All movies after Ricochet have been distributed by Warner Bros and its subsidiary New Line Cinema.-Films:-Television series:*Moonlight...
as director of film development. She was later head of development at MacDonald/Parkes Productions before she joined Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
as senior vice president of production. There, she took part in the development and production of such projects as Twelve Monkeys
Twelve Monkeys
12 Monkeys is a 1995 science fiction film directed by Terry Gilliam, inspired by Chris Marker's 1962 short film La jetée, and starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Plummer....
and Dazed and Confused
Dazed and Confused
"Dazed and Confused" is a song by Jake Holmes, which was covered by The Yardbirds, and later reworked by Led Zeppelin who hold a separate copyright on the song.-Jake Holmes:...
.
Later, Jacobson became a senior film executive at DreamWorks SKG where she was responsible for developing What Lies Beneath
What Lies Beneath
What Lies Beneath is a 2000 American supernatural horror-thriller film directed by Robert Zemeckis. It stars veteran actors Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as a well-to-do couple who experience a strange haunting that uncovers secrets about their past....
. She also takes credit for the idea behind DreamWorks' first animated feature Antz
Antz
Antz is a 1998 American computer animated action adventure film produced by DreamWorks Animation. It features the voices of well-known actors such as Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Jennifer Lopez, Sylvester Stallone, Dan Aykroyd, Anne Bancroft, Gene Hackman, Christopher Walken, and Danny Glover as...
. Speaking of her mode of working while listening to pitches for new films, she said, "We start with the obligatory chat about the weather, traffic, sports or politics. Then somebody concludes the chitchat (usually me) and the writer does his or her schpiel. The 'dog and pony.' The desired outcome is for me to love the story and want to buy it. But a big part of my job is to pass. I leap only once every six to eight weeks."
Disney exec
In 1998, she moved to Disney where she was responsible for developing scripts and overseeing film production for Walt Disney PicturesWalt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...
, Touchstone Pictures
Touchstone Pictures
Touchstone Pictures is an American film production label and is one of several film labels of the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group. Established in 1984, its releases typically feature more mature themes and darker tones than those that are released under the Walt Disney Pictures banner.Touchstone...
and Hollywood Pictures
Hollywood Pictures
Hollywood Pictures is one of The Walt Disney Company's several alternate movie divisions. Like Disney's Touchstone Pictures brand, it produces films for a more mature adult audience than Walt Disney Pictures.-History:...
. Among her projects as studio executive were The Sixth Sense
The Sixth Sense
The Sixth Sense is a 1999 American psychological thriller film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film tells the story of Cole Sear , a troubled, isolated boy who is able to see and talk to the dead, and an equally troubled child psychologist who tries to help him...
, Remember the Titans
Remember the Titans
Remember the Titans is a 2000 American sports film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Boaz Yakin. Inspired by real events, the plot was conceived from a screenplay written by Gregory Allen Howard. The film starts as a new coach of the Titans, a football team previously coached by the...
, Pearl Harbor, The Princess Diaries
The Princess Diaries (film)
The Princess Diaries is a 2001 comedy film produced by singer and actress Whitney Houston and directed by Garry Marshall. It is based on Meg Cabot's 2000 novel of the same name...
, The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children by C. S. Lewis. It is considered a classic of children's literature and is the author's best-known work, having sold over 100 million copies in 47 languages...
, and the Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean is a multi-billion dollar Walt Disney franchise encompassing a series of films, a theme park ride, and spinoff novels as well as numerous video games and other publications. The franchise originates with the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, which opened at Disneyland in...
franchise. For her efforts at helping expand the role of women in the entertainment industry, Women in Film awarded her the Crystal Award in 2003. In 2005, Forbes Magazine named Jacobson one of the "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women" in acknowledgement of her success.
Closely associated with film director M. Night Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan
Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan,known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, is an Indian-born American screenwriter, film director, and producer known for making movies with contemporary supernatural plots that climax with a twist ending. He is also known for filming his movies in and around...
at Disney (besides The Sixth Sense, she also worked with him on Unbreakable, Signs
Signs (film)
Signs is a 2002 American science fiction horror film directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It was adapted from a screenplay also written by Shyamalan. Executive producers for the film comprised Shyamalan, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy and Sam Mercer. The story focuses on a former preacher named Graham...
and The Village
The Village (2004 film)
The Village is a 2004 American fantasy-thriller film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan about a end-of-the-19th-century village whose inhabitants live in fear of the creatures inhabiting the woods beyond it. The movie was shot in a recreation of a 19th-century village outside Philadelphia,...
), she and Shyamalan clashed during pre-production of his 2006 film, Lady in the Water
Lady in the Water
The soundtrack was composed by James Newton Howard. The last four tracks are non-soundtrack songs from singer/songwriter Amanda Ghost, Indie rock band A Whisper in the Noise, and rock 'n' roll revivalists Silvertide. Each of the four songs was written by Bob Dylan...
. Shyamalan left the studio after Jacobson and others became, in Shyamalan's eyes, overly critical of his script, which would eventually be produced by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
Shyamalan is quoted in a book about the difficult period that he "had witnessed the decay of her creative vision right before his own wide-open eyes. She didn't want iconoclastic directors. She wanted directors who made money." In her own defense, Jacobson said, "in order to have a Hollywood relationship more closely approximate a real relationship, you have to have a genuine back and forth of the good and the bad. Different people have different ideas about respect. For us, being honest is the greatest show of respect for a filmmaker."
Fired from Disney
She has a female partner and together the couple have three children. It was immediately after the birth of their third child on 17 July 2006, while still in the delivery room, that Jacobson was fired over the telephone by Richard CookDick Cook
Richard W. "Dick" Cook is the former Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. At the time of his separation from the company, he was the only remaining top Disney executive who had worked for the company since before Michael Eisner took charge in 1984...
, studio chief for The Walt Disney Company. Apparently as part of a studio restructuring, she was replaced by Oren Aviv, marketing chief of the studio. Soon after she was fired, Jacobson remarked, "There are two kinds of people in this job: the ones who think they'll have it forever and the ones who know they won't." She said she had treated her own job at Disney "as a privilege, not an entitlement." Among her last projects as production executive was The Game Plan
The Game Plan (film)
The Game Plan is a 2007 family comedy film directed by Andy Fickman and starring The Rock. This is the last film in which Johnson uses his ring name "The Rock." This is also the last Disney film to be distributed by Buena Vista, due to Disney semi-retiring the name in May 2007, making all other...
, a family comedy released in late September 2007. The film opened number one in its first week at the box office and held the top spot through the second week of release.
Color Force
By the start of 2007, she was back at work, this time at her own newly established production company, Color ForceColor Force (film company)
Color Force is an American studio founded in 2007 by producer, Nina Jacobson. It produces computer animated films. The only films that were clearly out in the media are Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Diary of a Wimpy Kid : Rodrick Rules. But another film that came out not related to the to movies is One...
. Color Force signed a three-year "first-look" production deal with DreamWorks in December 2006. The first feature project released in theaters was Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (film)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a 2010 American comedy film directed by Thor Freudenthal and based on Jeff Kinney's book of the same name. The film was released on March 19, 2010. It was released on DVD, iTunes, and Blu-ray on August 3, 2010.-Plot:...
.
Jacobson will be producing bestseller The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games is a first person young-adult science fiction novel written by Suzanne Collins. It was originally published on September 14, 2008, by Scholastic. It is the first book of the Hunger Games trilogy. It introduces sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world...
by Suzanne Collins
Suzanne Collins
Suzanne Collins is an American television writer and novelist.-Early life:Suzanne Collins is the daughter of an Air Force officer. She graduated from the Alabama School of Fine Arts and earned her M.F.A. from New York University in Dramatic Writing....
, alongside the author, who will be screenwriting. The film is set for release on March 23, 2012. She is currently producing One Day
One Day (film)
One Day is a film directed by Lone Scherfig. It was adapted by David Nicholls from his 2009 novel of the same name. It stars Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess...
.
Personal life
In 1995, she and film director Bruce CohenBruce Cohen
Bruce Cohen is an American film producer. Cohen and his producing partner, Dan Jinks, run The Jinks/ Cohen Company. Cohen and Jinks produced American Beauty, winner of the 1999 Academy Award for Best Picture...
formed Out There, a collection of gay and lesbian entertainment industry activists.