SERENITY (2019) About The Crew

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

STEVEN KNIGHT (Director, Writer, Producer), GREG SHAPIRO (Producer), GUY HEELEY (Producer), CARSTEN H. W. LORENZ (Executive Producer), DAVID DINERSTEIN (Executive Producer), JASON RESNICK (Executive Producer), WILLIAM SADLEIR (Executive Producer), ANDREAS HABERMEYER (Co-Producer), LAURA JENNINGS (Editor), ANDREW MCALPINE (Production Designer), and DANNY CLICKER (Costume Design)

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STEVEN KNIGHT (Director, Writer, Producer)

Steven Knight is a writer and director. In 1988, Knight and Mike Whitehill started a freelance writing partnership providing material for television and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (co-created by Knight and produced by Celador) won awards around the globe including a BAFTA, National Television Awards, Indie Awards, Broadcast Awards, New York Festival, Silver Rose of Montreux and the Queen’s Award for Enterprise.

Knight has had four novels published. The Movie House , Alphabet City , Out of the Blue and, in 2011, his first children’s novel, The Last Words of Will Wolfkin

Knight’s first screenplay, Dirty Pretty Things , directed by Stephen Frears, premiered at the 2002 Venice Film Festival to outstanding reviews and was selected to open the prestigious London Film Festival. The film was released in the UK and the US to universal critical acclaim. It won a host of prestigious awards including four BIFAs, Best Film & Best Actor at the Evening Standard British Film Awards, the 2004 Humanitas Award, the Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay, Best British Screenwriter at the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the 76th Annual Academy Awards.

His first stage play, The President of an Empty Room , directed by Howard Davies, opened at the National Theatre, London in 2005.

2 more screenplays were released in 2007. Amazing Grace , directed by Michael Apted, about the life of the British anti-slavery politician William Wilberforce and Eastern Promises , directed by David Cronenberg and starring Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts, which centred on London’s Russian crime community.

Other screenplays – The Hundred Foot Journey (directed by Lasse Hallström) released in 2014, Pawn Sacrifice (directed by Ed Zwick) premiered at the Toronto Film Festival 2014, Seventh Son (directed by Sergei Bodrov) and Burnt (directed by John Wells) both in 2015 and Allied (directed by Robert Zemeckis), a WWII thriller, starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard released in 2016. The November Criminals (directed by Sacha Gervasi), an adaptation of the book by Sam Munson, in 2017 and in 2018 - Woman Walks Ahead (directed by Susanna White), starring Jessica Chastain and The Girl In The Spider’s Web (co-written by Knight), starring Claire Foy.

Knight is also the creator and Executive Producer/writer on BAFTA Award winning Peaky Blinders , starring Cillian Murphy, Helen McCrory and Paul Anderson. It also won the TV Choice Awards in 2018 for Best Drama Series and Best Actor. Series 5 is currently shooting and will air this year on BBC1.

He’s also the Executive Producer/creator/writer on BBC series Taboo , which starred Tom Hardy.

He has directed and written: - his directorial debut, Hummingbird, starred Jason Statham and Agata Buzek about a damaged ex-special forces soldier living on the streets of London and , Locke , with Tom Hardy, about an ordinary working man whose life changes in the course of one evening and which won him a 2013 BIFA for Best Screenplay.

A new drama series he created for Apple, See , is now in production. Francis Lawrence directed the first episodes. Knight is Writer and Executive Producer.

His new film (written and directed), Serenity , starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, will be released in the USA on January 25th and in the UK on March 1st.

In November 2016, he received the highest honour from the Royal Television Society’s Midlands Centre – the Baird Medal – in recognition of his career. He also has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Worcester and an Honorary Degree of Doctor from the Birmingham City University.

GREG SHAPIRO (Producer)

Greg Shapiro is the Academy Award®-winning producer of The Hurt Locker , directed by Kathryn Bigelow, which received a total of six Oscars® including Best Picture. Shapiro was also executive producer on Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty , which received five Academy Award® nominations, and Bruce Robinson’s The Rum Diary , starring Johnny Depp.

Most recently, Shapiro was executive producer of Detroit , directed by Bigelow, written by Mark Boal, and released by Annapurna in August 2017.

His upcoming films include Serenity , written and directed by Steven Knight, starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jason Clarke, Diane Lane, and Djimon Honsou, and The Rhythm Section , directed by Reed Morano and starring Blake Lively and Jude Law, and Richard Says Goodbye directed by Wayne Roberts, starring Johnny Depp, Zoey Deutsch and Danny Huston.

Shapiro also produced James Gray’s The Immigrant , starring Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner, which premiered at the 66th Annual Cannes Film Festival as part of the official competition and was released by The Weinstein Company in 2014. His other producing credits include Child 44 directed by Daniel Espinosa; The Conspirator , directed by Robert Redford; The Rules of Attraction directed by Roger Avary; and the popular Harold & Kumar franchise.

For television, Shapiro is executive producer of Graves, a 10-episode, half-hour political satire produced by Lionsgate TV and Epic. Graves , which ran for two seasons, premiered in the fall of 2016 and promptly earned star Nick Nolte a Golden Globe® nomination for his role as ex-President Richard Graves.

GUY HEELEY (Producer)

Serenity starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway marks BAFTA nominated Guy Heeley’s third collaboration with Steven Knight. He also produced critically acclaimed Locke starring Tom Hardy and Hummingbird, both of which were written and directed by Knight

In 2015 he produced the five-part mini-series London Spy starring Ben Whishaw for Working Title/BBC.

He was Executive Producer on the feature film Denial written by David Hare and starring Rachel Weisz which was released in 2016.

Having produced two TV series with director Dominic Savage, he produced his latest feature film The Escape starring Gemma Arterton which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2017.

Before becoming a producer, he was one of the UK’s top assistant directors, working on over 30 films including Bend it Like Beckham , Pride and Prejudice and The Iron Lady.

He is currently in post-production on writer/director Jessica Swale’s WW2 set feature Summerland starring Gemma Arterton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Tom Courtenay which completed principle photography in November 2017.

CARSTEN H. W. LORENZ (Executive Producer)

A filmmaker for over 30 years, Carsten Lorenz has experience producing some of Hollywood’s most high-profile projects. His versatility and talent have given him success on an international level, having produced big-budget films all over Europe, Asia, Africa, New Zealand, and South America.

In addition to his abilities on a global scale, Carsten has expertise as an in-house executive and as a line producer. He has worked for nearly every major studio in the industry, including 20th Century Fox, Sony, New Line, Universal, Skydance, and IM Global. Most recently, Carsten produced Stephen Knight’s dramatic thriller Serenity (Starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway), Drake Doremus’s sci-fi romance Zoe (starring Ewan McGregor and Lea Seydoux) and Roland Emmerich’s Midway (starring Luke Wilson).

Carsten’s other credits include Sony’s incredibly successful horror hit The Grudge , Dean Devlin’s tense David Tennant-thriller Bad Samaritan , Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi action flick Independence Day : Resurgence , and New Line Cinema’s stoner comedy Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle .

DAVID DINERSTEIN (Executive Producer) is the president of Aviron Pictures, LLC. Among the most accomplished film industry executives working today, he has been responsible for distributing many of the most significant independent films of the past 20 years. Releases he has been involved with have garnered a staggering 96 Academy Award nominations and 15 wins.

Dinerstein has a broad range of experience in entertainment marketing, distribution, production, programming, acquisitions, finance and international sales. He has built and managed several independent companies from their inception. Dinerstein has contributed to the release of more than 200 movies, helping to launch the careers of numerous iconic filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Paul Greengrass, Justin Lin, Sofia Coppola, Baz Luhrmann, Jane Campion and Kevin Smith.

Most recently, Dinerstein worked on the releases of the surprise hits Kidnap , starring Halle Berry, and 47 Meters Down . He also executive produced Cries From Syria , an HBO documentary that premiered at Sundance, and Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom , a Netflix documentary nominated for both an Oscar and an Emmy.

Film credits include American Hustle , Her , Pulp Fiction , The Illusionist , The Full Monty , Hustle & Flow , Mad Hot Ballroom , The Virgin Suicides , You Can Count on Me , The Brothers McMullen , The Ice Storm , The Piano , The Crow , sex, lies, and videotape , The Crying Game , My Left Foot , Reservoir Dogs and Clerks .

Dinerstein co-founded Paramount Classics and was one of the original architects of Fox Searchlight. He also served as the president of Lakeshore Entertainment. He started his career at Miramax Films, where he served as the head of marketing.

A graduate of Boston University, Dinerstein is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

JASON RESNICK (Executive Producer) is executive vice president of acquisitions at Aviron Pictures. Most recently, he has been a consultant and executive producer advising organizations and filmmakers on opportunities for production, financing and distribution in the independent film marketplace. His clients have included MGM Studios, Relativity Media, Millennium Entertainment and Sky Italia, an Italian TV channel.

Previously, Resnick served as senior vice president and general manager, worldwide acquisitions, for the Universal Pictures Group. He was in charge of acquisitions and co-productions for all of Universal’s distribution platforms worldwide: Universal Pictures, Focus Features, Rogue Pictures and Universal Home Entertainment. Resnick’s acquisitions included The Motorcycle Diaries , Lost in Translation , Swimming Pool , Brick , Mean Creek , My Summer of Love , Fearless , Block Party , Unleashed , Ray , Drag Me to Hell, Step Up 2 , Land of the Dead , Mulholland Drive , Brotherhood of the Wolf, Gosford Park and In the Bedroom.

Resnick is fluent in French and Spanish, proficient in Italian and Portuguese and holds a Bachelor of Arts in English, graduating cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania.

WILLIAM SADLEIR (Executive Producer) is the chairman and CEO of Aviron Capital. He has more than 30 years of experience in transaction financing, filmmaking, strategic marketing and operational leadership, at the senior executive level in both private enterprise and in government. Sadleir was previously CEO of Clarius Entertainment, a domestic film distribution company. He was also chairman of Dayna Communications Inc., a venture capital-backed technology company he founded in 1985. Intel acquired Dayna in 1997. He was founder and CEO of the Genesis Group, an agribusiness consolidation later acquired by Lebanon Chemicals. He was also founder and CEO of Tempus Entertainment Group, a joint venture with the Walt Disney Company/ABC Multimedia and Electronic Arts.

Prior to his business initiatives, Sadleir served as special assistant to the president of the United States at the White House. He later served as deputy assistant secretary of state and deputy chief of protocol. He was also appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve two terms on the Peace Corps Advisory Council.

Sadleir is a magna cum laude graduate of Brigham Young University, where he was a Hinckley scholar, and is a graduate of Harvard Business School

ANDREAS HABERMEYER (Co-Producer)

Andreas Habermeyer is a multifaceted, award-winning media agnostic filmmaker. Andreas worked in the Movie Business, in TV Productions and produced more than 1000 TV-Commercials and Corporate films. His short film, For a Good Reason was nominated for an Oscar. As a producer, his work has earned him more than 35 national and international awards.

He gained experience in different departments within the Major US Film Studios, from PA to PM, from 1st AD to line producer. He has worked for Steven Spielberg´s Amblin Entertainment, Columbia Pictures (USA &Germany), Lorimar Studios/Sony Pictures and New ConstantinFilm. He studied Film & Economics at the University of Television and Film in Munich and at Ludwig-Maximilans University Munich, at UCLA in Los Angeles as well at EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs). His Production Company IDP is a Procter & Gamble, Unilver and NBC Universal Pictures preferred production company. Andreas has also collaborated with well-known photographer’s such as David LaChapelle and Mario Testino on commercial photo shoots. Since 2016 he is again focusing on line producing Hollywood Movie Productions

LAURA JENNINGS (Editor)

Born in London, Laura Jennings studied classical music followed by Fine Art Film at London’s prestigious Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design before starting her career in Film Post Production. Some of her earliest credits were as Assist Visual Effects Editor on films including Casino Royale, directed by Martin Campbell and Children of Men directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and she was later Visual Effects Editor on Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes , starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, John Carter directed by Andrew Stanton, and Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes’ James Bond film Skyfall .

Jenning’s first feature film as Editor was Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow , starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, for which she won Best Editing at the Saturn Awards, the Boston Online Film Critics Association Awards, the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards, the San Diego Film Critics Society Awards and received nominations from the Online Film & Television Association Awards and the Indiewire Critics’ Poll. Films that Jennings has gone on to edit subsequently include Luke Scott’s sci-fi thriller Morgan , starring Kate Mara, Paul Giamatti and Jennifer Jason-Leigh, and Mute , a sci-fi film noir directed by Duncan Jones, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Justin Theroux and Sam Rockwell. Jenning is currently working at Disney.

ANDREW MCALPINE (Production Designer)

Andrew McAlpine is an International Production Designer known mainly for his extensive work in cinema. Recent credits include Me Before You , for director Thea Sharrock, Denial , directed by Mick Jackson, and King Charles II , directed by Rupert Goold.

During his formative years, McAlpine co-founded his own theatre company, Commonstock, collaborating with the company for 7 years. He then expanded his skills by working with many other established Theatre and Opera Directors, along with Choreographers such as Sally Potter, Richard Alston and Pip Simmons.

Having graduated with an MFA in Fine Arts, McAlpine received a Gulbenkian grant to create some breakthrough work in Holography. The concept of illusion as a journey has also lead McAlpine to collaborate with other artists such as Juan Munoz at the Tate Modern, London, UK, and Architects Branson and Coates with whom he created Journey through The Body , for the Millenium Dome. Recent projects are for sustainable Eco Hotels and with architects The Manser Practice with whom he developed Rockflower

McAlpine is best known for the many feature films that he has made over the past thirty years. Films such as Sid and Nancy directed by Alex Cox; The Piano directed by Jane Campion, for which he won an AFI and BAFTA award; Clockers directed by Spike Lee, and The Beach , directed by Danny Boyle, and Lone Sherfig’s An Education , are just some of the highlights of an impressive resume. McAlpine’s most recent film is the upcoming Serenity , directed by Steven Knight.

DANNY CLICKER (COSTUME DESIGN)

Danny Glicker (Costume Designer) was honored with an Academy Award® nomination as well as the Costume Designers Guild Excellence in Period Film nomination for his work on Gus Van Sant's, Milk starring Sean Penn, who received the Best Actor Academy Award® for his portrayal of Harvey Milk.

Additional honors include the Costume Designers Guild Excellence in Contemporary Film Award for his work on Transamerica and was nominated for his work on Up in the Air , directed by frequent collaborator Jason Reitman, for whom he also designed the costumes for Thank You for Smoking , Labor Day , and The Front Runner starring Hugh Jackman as 80’s presidential candidate Gary Hart.

Recent releases include Drew Goddard’s Bad Times At The El Royale starring Jeff Bridges, Chris Hemsworth, Dakota Johnson and Cynthia Erivo; and mother! , Darren Aronofsky’s bold allegorical tale starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris.

In addition to his work on Milk , Glicker partners frequently with Gus Van Sant on films including Restless, The Sea of Trees , and Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot starring Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, and Rooney Mara about the legendary cartoonist John Callahan.

Glicker teamed with British director Andrew Haigh to design the costumes for the complete run of HBO’s Looking , the San Francisco-based series about contemporary gay characters navigating love and life through the modern world. And while on hiatus from Looking , told another distinctly California-based story with director Bill Pohlad, Love & Mercy , starring Paul Dano and John Cusack as the Beach Boy’s Brian Wilson in different eras, and also starring Elizabeth Banks and Paul Giamatti

Additional collaborations include Gold directed by Stephen Gaghan starring Matthew McConaughey; two projects with Seth Rogen: The Guilt Trip co-starring Barbara Streisand, and This Is The End , with a comedy all-star cast including James Franco, Jonah Hill, Glicker McBride, Craig Robinson, and Jay Baruchel. He worked on two projects with Alan Ball: True Blood , HBO’s hit vampire series, and Towelhead ; On The Road directed by Walter Salles. Additionally, he worked on two films with the Polish brothers: The Astronaut Farmer starring Billy Bob Thornton and Virginia Madsen, and their visionary Northfork starring James Woods and Nick Nolte; and Michael Cuesta’s drama L.I.E. with Brian Cox and Paul Dano.

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