Akiva Goldsman - Life and Career

Life and Career

Akiva Goldsman was born in New York City on July 7, 1962 to Tev Goldsman, a therapist, and Mira Rothenberg, a child psychologist. Both parents ran a group home for emotionally disturbed children. Goldsman's parents were occupied with their work, and Goldsman said, "By the time I was 10 or 12, I realized they had taken my parents away from me. I wanted nothing more to do with that world. I wanted to be a writer. I had a fantasy that someday I'd see my name on a book." In 1983, Goldsman attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. After graduation, Goldsman studied creative writing at New York University. He began writing screenplays, and in 1994, he wrote the screenplay that would become the film Silent Fall. Afterward, director Joel Schumacher hired Goldsman to write The Client.

In the late 1990s, Akiva Goldsman wrote screenplays for A Time to Kill and Batman & Robin, which were considered subpar quality and got him nominated for the Golden Raspberry Awards. Goldsman came to the realization, "I sort of got lost. I was writing away from what I knew. It's a little like a cat chasing its tail. Once you start making movies that are less than satisfying, you start to lose your opportunity to make the satisfying ones. People are not serving them up to you, saying, 'You're the guy we want for this.'" Goldsman appealed to producer Brian Grazer to write the screenplay for A Beautiful Mind and ultimately won an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay. The star of A Beautiful Mind, Russell Crowe, later invited Goldsman and director Ron Howard to film Cinderella Man, and Goldsman wrote the film's screenplay.

In 2009, he signed on to produce the film adaptation of the British television series Primeval, alongside Emily Cummins and Kerry Foster. In August 2009, Goldsman signed on as a producer on the 20th Century Fox Fantastic Four reboot.

Goldsman is set to produce Mr. & Mrs. Jones, a prequel to the 2005 film Mr. & Mrs. Smith, for Regency Enterprises. On April 6, 2010, it was announced that he will produce a PG-13 remake of the Troma cult film The Toxic Avenger.

On September 8, 2010, it was announced that he would write the first season of the television series based on the novels of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. The project is currently in "development hell".

In October 2010, Warner Bros. Pictures and Goldsman's production company Weed Road acquired the spec script for Dark Moon, a space drama from The Fourth Kind scribe Olatunde Osunsanmi. Goldsman will act as producer for the film which Osunsanmi will direct.

Goldsman will produce the Ryan Gosling-starring remake of Logan's Run, with screenwriter Andrew Baldwin and director Nicolas Winding Refn, for Warner Bros. Pictures.

On March 8, 2012, Goldsman was hired by Warner Bros. to develop Archaia Entertainment's comicbook mini-series Lucid into a possible film franchise. Goldsman would also serve as producer alongside Zachery Quinto. This is the second deal Goldsman and Warner Bros. have done with Archaia Entertainment, they are fostering the animated feature Bolivar, a dinosaur-fable based on the upcoming book by Sean Rubin. Kealan O'Rourke is penning the screenplay and is also set to direct the film.

Goldsman is producing the Universal Pictures feature Lone Survivor, from writer/director Peter Berg, based on the book, Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, by Marcus Luttrell. It tells the story of Luttrell's Navy SEAL team persevering a 2005 Afghanistan, on a mission to kill a terrorist leader. The movie stars Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster and Taylor Kitsch, and is expected to begin principal photography in Fall 2012.

Goldsman will make his feature film directing debut with Winter's Tale, an on-screen adaption of the Mark Helprin novel. Goldsman had worked the past seven years on developing the project with Warner Bros. Pictures, finally getting a green light on the script (which he wrote). The principal cast consist of Will Smith, William Hurt, Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell, and Jessica Brown Findlay.