The Phi Beta Kappa Society (ΦΒΚ) is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, and to induct the most outstanding students of arts and sciences at only select American colleges and universities. It was founded at the College of William and Mary on December 5, 1776, as the first collegiate Greek-letter fraternity and was among the earliest collegiate fraternal societies. Since its inception, 17 U.S. presidents, 40 U.S. Supreme Court justices, and 136 Nobel laureates have been inducted as members.
Thomas Edgar Rothman is an American businessman, film producer, film executive and current chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group. In this role, Rothman oversees all of the studio's motion picture production and distribution activities worldwide, including Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Sony Pictures Animation, Sony Pictures Classics, 3000 Pictures, Sony Pictures International Productions, Stage 6 Films, AFFIRM Films. Rothman joined Sony Pictures in late-2013 as chairman of TriStar Productions and in 2015 was promoted to Chairman of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, followed by the release in 2017 and 2018 of titles such as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Venom, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, Peter Rabbit, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Under Rothman's leadership, the Motion Picture Group was returned to strong profitability and experienced several of its most profitable years in history with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Little Women. Driven by tentpoles such as Spider-Man: Far From Home, Jumanji: The Next Level, and Bad Boys For Life, fiscal year 2020 was the film studio's best in over a decade in terms of both ultimate profitability and operating income.
Plan B Entertainment, Inc., more commonly known as Plan B, is an American production company founded in November in 2001 by Brad Pitt, Brad Grey, Kristin Hahn and Jennifer Aniston. The company first signed with Warner Bros. as a replacement for Brad Grey Pictures, a company operated by Brad Grey. In 2005, after Pitt and Aniston divorced, Grey became the CEO of Paramount Pictures and Pitt became the sole owner of the company. The president of the company was for many years Dede Gardner, but she and Pitt named Jeremy Kleiner co-president with Gardner in 2013. Three of the production company's movies, The Departed, 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight, have won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
The New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director is an award given by the New York Film Critics Circle, honoring the finest achievements in filmmaking.
Kevin Feige is an American film and television producer. He has been the president of Marvel Studios and the primary producer of the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise since 2007. The films he has produced have a combined worldwide box office gross of over $29.7 billion, making him the highest grossing producer of all time, with Avengers: Endgame becoming the highest-grossing film at the time of its release.
Jill Lepore is an American historian and journalist. She is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she has contributed since 2005. She writes about American history, law, literature, and politics.
A'Lelia Perry Bundles is an American journalist, news producer and author, known for her 2001 biography of her great-great-grandmother Madam C. J. Walker.
Dorcas Wright "Dede" Gardner is an American film producer. She was president since the founding of Plan B Entertainment and currently serving as Co-President with Jeremy Kleiner since 2013. She is a two-time Oscar winner for 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight, the first woman to win two Oscars for Best Picture. Her films Selma, The Tree of Life, The Big Short,Vice, Minari and Women Talking were additionally nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
David A. Unger is CEO of Artist International Group, a global talent management, branding and content production company representing clients in the fields of film, television and media advisory. Born in London, Unger has served as a talent and literary agent for over 20 years.
Annapurna Pictures is an American independent media company founded by Megan Ellison on April 2, 2011 and based in Los Angeles, California. It is active in film, television and theatrical production, film distribution, and video game publishing.
A24 is an American independent entertainment company that specializes in film and television production, as well as film distribution. The company is based in Manhattan.
Blumhouse Productions, LLC, doing business as Blumhouse, is an American film and television production company founded in 2000 by Jason Blum and Amy Israel.
Nicholas Britell is an American film and television composer. He has received numerous accolades including a Emmy Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards and a Grammy Award. He has received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score for Barry Jenkins' Moonlight (2016) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), and Adam McKay's Don't Look Up (2021). He also scored McKay's The Big Short (2015) and Vice (2018). He is also known for scoring Battle of the Sexes (2017), Cruella (2021), and She Said (2022).
La La Land is a 2016 American musical romantic drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a struggling jazz pianist and an aspiring actress who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles. The supporting cast includes John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Finn Wittrock, and J. K. Simmons.
The David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures is awarded annually by the Producers Guild of America (PGA) at the Producers Guild of America Awards ceremonies recognizing the individual's outstanding body of work in motion pictures. The award category was instituted in 1989 and first awarded at the 1st Producers Guild Awards.
NEON Rated, LLC, doing business as NEON, is an American independent film production and distribution company founded in 2017 by CEO Tom Quinn and Tim League, who also was the co-founder of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain. Its first film, Colossal, was released on April 7, 2017. The company is best known for distributing such notable films as I, Tonya (2017), Three Identical Strangers (2018), Apollo 11 (2019), Parasite (2019), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Palm Springs (2020), Possessor (2020), She Dies Tomorrow (2020), Spencer (2021), The Worst Person in the World (2021), All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), Triangle of Sadness (2022), Anatomy of a Fall (2023), and Ferrari (2023). Parasite is Neon's highest-grossing film at the worldwide box office with more than $200 million and became the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. As of 2019, League is no longer involved with daily operations for the company.
Karim Amer is an Egyptian-American film producer and director. He worked on The Square (2013) and The Great Hack (2019); the former was the first Egyptian film to earn an Academy Award nomination and went on to win three Emmy Awards, while the latter got nominated for an Emmy and a BAFTA Award. In 2020, he produced and directed The Vow, an HBO documentary series about the self-improvement group, NXIVM. In 2022, he produced and directed Flight/Risk for Amazon Studios, revolving around whistleblowers at Boeing.
Kevin Messick is an American film producer. He was nominated for two Academy Awards in the category Best Picture for the films Vice and Don't Look Up.
Christina Oh is an American film producer. She is best known for producing the 2020 film Minari, which earned six nominations at the 93rd Academy Awards. The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2020, winning both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award.
