![]() |
Robert Shaye | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Born | Robert Kenneth Shaye March 4, 1939 |
Alma mater | University of Michigan Columbia Law School |
Occupation(s) | Film producer, film director, writer, actor |
Years active | 1963–present |
Known for | Founder of New Line Cinema |
Notable work | The Lord of the Rings |
Spouse | Eva G. Lindstern (m. 1970) |
Children | 2 |
Relatives | Lin Shaye (sister) |
Robert Kenneth Shaye (born March 4, 1939) is an American businessman, film producer, actor, director, and writer. Shaye is the founder of New Line Cinema, a film production studio that was most successful for distributing The Lord of the Rings film series, based on the classic fantasy novel of the same name by English author J. R. R. Tolkien and directed by New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson. He stepped down from New Line in 2008 after the studio merged with Warner Bros. Pictures. [2]
Shaye was born to a Jewish [3] [4] family in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Dorothy and Max Mendle Shaye, a supermarket owner and artist. [1] His mother was an immigrant from Russia. [3] He is the brother of actress Lin Shaye. [3]
Shaye graduated from Detroit's Mumford High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Michigan and a J.D. degree from Columbia Law School. He also graduated from the University of Stockholm as a Fulbright scholar. Shaye is a member of the New York State Bar Association, and he has served on the board of trustees for the Neurosciences Institute, the Legal Aid Society, the American Film Institute, and the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation. [2]
In 1967, Shaye formed New Line Cinema. The company started with a package of feature films and shorts rented to colleges. From there, New Line expanded to re-releases such as Reefer Madness and first-run domestic distribution of foreign films such as Get Out Your Handkerchiefs . New Line released blockbuster films in the 1980s such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles . In 1994, New Line was acquired by the Turner Broadcasting System for $500 million, with Shaye earning more than $100 million. [5] [6] Later, in 1996, Turner Broadcasting System became part of Time Warner (which is currently known as Warner Bros. Discovery), a merger between Time Inc. and Warner Communications. When Shaye retired from New Line in 2008, the studio was merged with Warner Bros. Pictures.
In 1998, when New Zealand director Peter Jackson brought his 36-minute pitch reel for a big screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy classic The Lord of the Rings to New Line, hoping to turn the three volumes into two films, Shaye suggested Jackson make three films instead. He subsequently greenlit a simultaneous production for all three installments. [2] The Lord of the Rings was nominated a total of thirty Academy Awards, winning 17, including 11 awards for The Return of the King . At the box office, all three films are among New Line's highest-grossing and most popular films, earning a combined total of nearly $3 billion worldwide.
Independently and through his family office Lemoko Management Company [7] he is an active investor in companies like Brat TV. [8]
In June 2008, Shaye and company co-chairman Michael Lynne departed New Line and formed an independent film company, Unique Features. The company's recent projects include The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (Sony/Constantin), the TV series Shadowhunters (Freeform Television), When the Bough Breaks (Screen Gems), and Ambition, directed by Shaye. [9]
He was a producer in all films unless otherwise noted.
Year | Film | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1984 | A Nightmare on Elm Street | Newsreader / KRGR Radio Announcer | Voice role Uncredited |
1985 | A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge | Bartender | Uncredited |
1986 | Quiet Cool | Franklin | |
1987 | The Hidden | Man in Silver Mercedes Picking Up a Gorgeous Girl | Uncredited |
1988 | A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master | Lecturer | |
1991 | Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare | Ticket Seller | |
1993 | Loaded Weapon 1 | Interrogation Room Person | Uncredited |
Man's Best Friend | Mobile Mechanic | ||
1994 | Wes Craven's New Nightmare | Himself | |
2001 | Festival in Cannes | Bert Shuster | |
2003 | Freddy vs. Jason | Principal Shaye | |
2004 | Cellular | Detective Looking Guy |
Year | Film | Notes |
---|---|---|
1963 | Image | Short film |
1965 | On Fighting Witches | Short film |
1973 | The Best of the New York Erotic Film Festival | |
1990 | Book of Love | |
2007 | The Last Mimzy | |
2019 | Ambition |
Year | Film |
---|---|
1977 | Stunts |
1982 | Alone in the Dark |
Year | Film | Notes |
---|---|---|
1965 | On Fighting Witches | Short film |
Year | Film | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1984 | A Nightmare on Elm Street | Director: melting staircase sequence | Uncredited |
Year | Film | Role |
---|---|---|
1997 | Spawn | Thanks |
Boogie Nights | Special thanks | |
1998 | Dark City | Thanks |
1999 | Magnolia | Special thanks |
2006 | Kill Your Darlings | Thanks |
2007 | Run Fatboy Run | |
2008 | The Women | Special appreciation |
2019 | Girl Blood Sport | Special thanks |
Motherless Brooklyn | The director wishes to thank |
Year | Title | Credit | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1988 | The Freddy Krueger Special | Television special | |
1988−90 | Freddy's Nightmares | Executive producer | |
2016−19 | Shadowhunters | Executive producer |
Year | Title | Role |
---|---|---|
1988 | Freddy's Nightmares | The Minister |
Year | Title | Role |
---|---|---|
2011 | SpongeBob SquarePants | Executive in charge of production |
The Lord of the Rings is a 1978 British-American animated fantasy film directed by Ralph Bakshi from a screenplay by Chris Conkling and Peter S. Beagle. It is based on the novel of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien, adapting from the volumes The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. Set in Middle-earth, the film follows a group of fantasy races—Hobbits, Men, an Elf, a Dwarf and a wizard—who form a fellowship to destroy a magical ring made by the Dark Lord Sauron, the main antagonist.
New Line Productions, Inc., doing business as New Line Cinema, is an American film and television production studio owned by Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). Since 2008, it has been operating as a unit of Warner Bros. Pictures.
The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy of epic fantasy adventure films directed by Peter Jackson, based on the novel The Lord of the Rings by British author J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are subtitled The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003). Produced and distributed by New Line Cinema with the co-production of WingNut Films, the films feature an ensemble cast including Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Christopher Lee, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Hugo Weaving, Andy Serkis, and Sean Bean.
The Return of the King is a 1980 American-Japanese animated musical fantasy television film created by Rankin/Bass and Topcraft. It is an adaptation of part of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1955 high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. It takes its name from The Return of the King, the third and final volume of the novel, and is a sequel to the 1977 film The Hobbit.
Saul Zaentz was an American film producer and record company executive. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and, in 1996, was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.
The Tolkien Estate is the legal body which manages the property of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien, including the copyright for most of his works. The individual copyrights have for the most part been assigned by the estate to subsidiary entities such as the J. R. R. Tolkien Discretionary Settlement and the Tolkien charitable trust. The various holdings of the Tolkien family, including the estate, have been organized under The Tolkien Company, the directors of which were Christopher Tolkien until August 2017 and his wife Baillie Tolkien, and J. R. R. Tolkien's grandson Michael George Tolkien. The executors of the estate were Christopher Tolkien, who was sole literary executor, and Cathleen Blackburn of Maier Blackburn, who has been the estate's solicitor for many years.
Middle-earth Enterprises, formerly known as Tolkien Enterprises, is a subdivision of the Embracer Freemode division of Embracer Group and formerly a trade name for a division of The Saul Zaentz Company. The subdivision owns the worldwide exclusive rights to certain elements of J. R. R. Tolkien's two most famous literary works: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. These elements include the names of characters contained within as well as the names of places, objects and events within them, and certain short phrases and sayings from the works.
Michael De Luca is an American film studio executive, film producer and screenwriter. He is also the former president of production at both New Line Cinema and DreamWorks. De Luca has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Picture. De Luca formerly served as the chairman of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Motion Picture Group and currently serves as a co-chairperson and CEO of Warner Bros. Pictures Group.
Many adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, an epic by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien, have been made in the media of film, radio, theatre, video games and recorded readings.
Michael Lynne was an American film executive.
The production of The Lord of the Rings film series posed enormous challenges, both logistical and creative. Under Peter Jackson's direction, these obstacles were overcome between 1997 and 2004. Many attempts to produce J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings had failed; the few that had reached the screen were animations. Since the publication of the source novels in the mid-1950s, many filmmakers and producers had considered a film but then set the project aside. The series as filmed by Jackson consists of three epic fantasy adventure films. They were produced by New Line Cinema, assisted by WingNut Films. The cinema versions appeared between 2001 and 2003, and the extended edition for home video in 2004. Development began in August 1997. The films were shot simultaneously. Their production was undertaken entirely in Jackson's native New Zealand. It spanned the 14-month period from October 1999 until December 2000, with pick-up shots filmed over a further 24 months, from 2001 to 2003.
Toby Emmerich, is an American producer, film executive, and screenwriter. He formerly served as the chairman of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group.
Black Legion is a 1937 American crime drama film, directed by Archie Mayo, with a script by Abem Finkel and William Wister Haines based on an original story by producer Robert Lord. The film stars Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Erin O'Brien-Moore and Ann Sheridan. It is a fictionalized treatment of the historic Black Legion of the 1930s in Michigan, a white vigilante group. A third of its members lived in Detroit, which had also been a center of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.
The Hobbit is a series of three fantasy adventure films directed by Peter Jackson. The films are subtitled An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). The films are based on J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, but much of the trilogy was inspired by the appendices to his 1954–55 The Lord of the Rings, which expand on the story told in The Hobbit. Additional material and new characters were created specially for the films. The series is a prequel to Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
Sir Peter Robert Jackson is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the director, writer and producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) and the Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), both of which are adapted from the novels of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. Other notable films include the critically lauded drama Heavenly Creatures (1994), the horror comedy The Frighteners (1996), the epic monster remake film King Kong (2005), the World War I documentary film They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) and the documentary The Beatles: Get Back (2021). He is the fourth-highest-grossing film director of all-time, his films having made over $6.5 billion worldwide.
The Hunt for Gollum is a 2009 British fantasy fan film based on the appendices of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1954–55 book The Lord of the Rings. The film is set in Middle-earth, when the wizard Gandalf the Grey fears that Gollum may reveal information about the One Ring to Sauron. Gandalf sends the ranger Aragorn on a quest to find Gollum.
J. R. R. Tolkien's novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), set in his fictional world of Middle-earth, have been the subject of numerous motion picture adaptations across film and television.
Warner Bros. Pictures is an American film production and distribution company of the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group division of Warner Bros. Entertainment. The studio is the flagship producer of live-action feature films within the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group unit, and is based at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California. Animated films produced by Warner Bros. Pictures Animation are also released under the studio banner.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is an American fantasy television series developed by J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay for the streaming service Amazon Prime Video. Based on J. R. R. Tolkien's history of Middle-earth, primarily material from the appendices of the novel The Lord of the Rings, the series is set thousands of years before the novel and depicts the major events of Middle-earth's Second Age. It is produced by Amazon MGM Studios in association with New Line Cinema.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an upcoming anime fantasy film directed by Kenji Kamiyama from a screenplay by the writing teams of Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, and Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou. It is based on the novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. Produced by New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Animation, and Sola Entertainment, the film stars Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino, Miranda Otto, Laurence Ubong Williams, and Shaun Dooley. The War of the Rohirrim is set 183 years before Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and tells the story of Helm Hammerhand (Cox), a legendary king of Rohan, and his family as they defend their kingdom against an army of Dunlendings.
"Last Mimzy" is from a sci-fi story that was a childhood favorite of director Robert Shaye. The screenplay is by seasoned Jewish writers Toby Emmerich and Bruce Joel Rubin (who won an Oscar for his script for "Ghost'). Shaye told the Detroit Jewish News that he met Emmerich when they were kids attending a Conservative synagogue in suburban Detroit