Mike Medavoy

Morris Mike Medavoy (born January 21, 1941) is an American film producer and business executive. He co-founded Orion Pictures and currently serves as chairman and CEO of Phoenix Pictures. He previously held leadership roles at TriStar Pictures and United Artists.

Morris Mike Medavoy was born in Shanghai on January 21, 1941, to Michael Medavoy, a garage mechanic, and Dora Medavoy, a dress shop owner whose clientele included Chinese actresses. His parents were Russian-speaking Ukrainian Jews; his mother was born in Harbin to immigrants from Odesa, and his father was originally from Ukraine. He has a younger sister named Ronnie.

The Medavoy family lived in Chile from 1947 to 1957, where Medavoy attended the Liceo Valentín Letelier de Santiago. They later moved to Los Angeles and lived with a relative. Medavoy became a U.S. citizen in 1963, the same year he graduated from UCLA. He joined the U.S. Army Reserve in 1963 and served at Fort Ord in California until 1969.

In 1964, Mike Medavoy began his career in the mailroom at Universal Studios. The following year, he became an agent at the General Artists Corporation and later joined Creative Management Associates (CMA). In 1967, he was appointed vice president of CMA’s motion picture department, where he worked with emerging filmmakers including Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola. In 1970, he moved to the International Famous Agency.

In 1974, Medavoy joined United Artists as senior vice president of production. During his tenure, the studio released several critically acclaimed films, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Rocky (1976), and Annie Hall (1977), all of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in their respective years.

In 1978, Medavoy co-founded Orion Pictures, a joint venture with Warner Bros. and former United Artists executives Arthur Krim, Robert Benjamin, Eric Pleskow, and William Bernstein. While at Orion, the company released several successful films, including Amadeus (1984), RoboCop (1987), Dances With Wolves (1990), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

In 1990, Medavoy was appointed chairman of TriStar Pictures. Under his leadership, the studio released films such as Philadelphia (1993), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Cliffhanger (1993), The Fisher King (1991), Legends of the Fall (1994), and Hook (1991). He left the company in 1994 following disagreements with Sony Pictures chairman Peter Guber.

In 1995, Medavoy co-founded Phoenix Pictures with Arnold W. Messer, establishing the company under a production agreement with Sony Pictures Entertainment. As chairman and CEO, Medavoy was involved in the production of films such as The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), The Thin Red Line (1998), and Zodiac (2007). Both The People vs. Larry Flynt and The Thin Red Line received Academy Award nominations. Other productions under Phoenix Pictures include Shutter Island (2010) and Black Swan (2010), both of which received critical acclaim.