Scott Rudin

Scott Rudin (born July 14, 1958) is an American film, television and theatre producer.

His films include the Academy Award-winning Best Picture No Country for Old Men, as well as Uncut Gems, Lady Bird, Fences, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, School of Rock, Zoolander, The Truman Show, Clueless, The Addams Family, and eight Wes Anderson films.

On Broadway, he has won 17 Tony Awards for shows such as The Book of Mormon, Hello, Dolly!, The Humans, A View from the Bridge, Fences and Passion.

He is one of nineteen people who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT).

In 2021, Rudin stepped back from his Broadway, film and streaming projects following The Hollywood Reporter allegations of abusive behavior towards his employees; Rudin's name was subsequently removed from a number of upcoming films, and Rudin's business relationship with the studio A24 was terminated.

Rudin was born and raised in Baldwin, New York, on Long Island in a Jewish family.

He attributes much of his interests and behavior to his upbringing.

At the age of 16, he started working as an assistant to theatre producer Kermit Bloomgarden.

Later, he worked for producers Robert Whitehead and Emanuel Azenberg.

In lieu of attending college, Rudin took a job as a casting director and ended up starting his own company.

His newly minted firm cast numerous Broadway shows, including Annie (1977) for Mike Nichols.

He also cast PBS's Verna: USO Girl (1978), starring Sissy Spacek and William Hurt; and the mini-series The Scarlet Letter (1979) starring Meg Foster, Kevin Conway and John Heard; also, the films King of the Gypsies (1978), The Wanderers (1979), Simon (1980) with Alan Arkin and Resurrection (1980).

In 1980, Rudin moved to Los Angeles, taking up employment at Edgar J. Scherick Associates, where he served as producer on a variety of films including I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1981), the NBC miniseries Little Gloria... Happy at Last (1982) and the Oscar-winning documentary He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' (1983).

Rudin then formed his own company, Scott Rudin Productions.

His first film under that banner was Gillian Armstrong's Mrs. Soffel (1984).

Not long after, Rudin placed his production shingle in dormancy and joined 20th Century-Fox as an executive producer.

At Fox, he met Jonathan Dolgen, a higher-level executive, with whom he would be working once again at Paramount Pictures years later.

Rudin rose through the ranks at Fox and became president of production in 1986 at 28 years old.

His stint at the top of Fox was short-lived, and he soon left and entered into a producing deal with Paramount.

On August 1, 1992, Rudin signed a deal with TriStar Pictures but soon moved back to Paramount.

Rudin's first-look deal with Paramount Pictures lasted nearly 15 years, producing pictures including The First Wives Club, The Addams Family, Clueless, Sabrina and Sleepy Hollow.

His first Broadway play, David Henry Hwang's Face Value in 1993, was produced alongside Stuart Ostrow and Jujamcyn Theaters, and it closed after eight preview performances.

He started a deal with Jujamcyn to develop and produce new plays for the theater chain.

In 1994, Rudin won the Best Musical Tony Award for his production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Passion.

The following year, he co-produced Kathleen Turner's Broadway comeback, Indiscretions, and Ralph Fiennes' New York stage debut in Hamlet.

In 1996, Rudin produced the revival of the Stephen Sondheim and Larry Gelbart musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, for which Nathan Lane won his first Tony Award.

His subsequent productions and co-productions have included Skylight, The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?, Seven Guitars, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, Copenhagen, Deuce, The History Boys, Beckett/Albee, Closer, The Blue Room, Doubt, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Year of Magical Thinking, A Behanding in Spokane, God of Carnage, The House of Blue Leaves, and Exit the King.

Previously, Harvey Weinstein and Rudin had public confrontations during the production of The Hours (2002), which Rudin produced for Miramax Films after it became a studio subsidiary under Disney.

Rudin later said he and Weinstein "are both control freaks. We both want to run our own shows. When I'm doing a Miramax movie, I work for him. And I don't like that feeling. I chafe under that. I especially chafe under it when I feel that I'm on a leash."

After the resignation of Paramount's chairwoman Sherry Lansing in 2004 and nearly simultaneous departure of Jonathan Dolgen (then president of the company), Rudin left the studio and set a five-year first-look pact with Disney that allowed him to make movies under their labels Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, and Miramax Films, whose founders Harvey and Bob Weinstein had departed.

His projects in the 2010s have included lower-budget, independent films.

On December 9, 2014, a major illegal breach of Sony's computer systems by "Guardians of Peace" hackers using Shamoon malware led to disclosure of many gigabytes of stolen information, including internal company documents.

In subsequent news coverage SPE Co-Chair Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin were noted to have had an email exchange about Pascal's upcoming encounter with President Barack Obama that included characterizations described as racist.

The two had suggested they should mention films about African-Americans upon meeting the president, such as Django Unchained, 12 Years a Slave, The Butler, and Amistad which all discuss slavery in the United States or the pre-civil rights era.

In the email thread, Rudin added, "I bet he likes Kevin Hart."

Rudin later said that the e-mails were "private emails between friends and colleagues written in haste and without much thought or sensitivity."

He added that he was "profoundly and deeply sorry".

Typically producing between two and five productions per year, Rudin is one of Broadway's most prolific commercial producers.

In 2015, he signed a television production deal with Fox.

In 2017 and 2018, Rudin and studio A24 released three films about adolescence by first-time writer/directors: Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird, Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade and Jonah Hill's Mid90s.