Yahoo Movies Cathy Schulman Heads To STX Entertainment As Top Production Exec
Cathy Schulman, who has overseen Mandalay Entertainment’s production slate for eight years, has exited her post and will be named as the top production exec at upstart studio STX Entertainment, effective immediately. She is expected to oversee production of the 12 to 15 films planned for the STX slate as well as its feature development. She arrived at the offices today.
Schulman, a producer on the Academy Award-winning Best Picture Crash in 2004, was brought in by STX’s motion picture group Chairman Adam Fogelson and President and Chief Content Officer Oren Aviv. Fogelson was running Universal when Mandalay had its first-look, three-year pact there.
“The most excitng parts in my career have been entrepreneurial ones, and I was thrilled to be asked by Oren and Adam to help build a new studio,” Schulman told Deadline. “How could I say no? It’s not every day you get to build a company from the ground up. I’m excited by the size of the slate and the number of creative people I will be working with at STX.”
At Mandalay, Schulman most recently oversaw and is producing Dark Places, based on the Gillian Flynn book of the same name. Flynn also wrote Gone Girl, which was made into a mega-hit movie of the same name.
Dark Places, which will be released later this year, stars Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz, Nick Hoult and Christina Hendricks. Schulman also recently produced The Voices, starring Ryan Reynolds, and Horns, starring Daniel Radcliffe. Schulman was actively developing numerous projects at Mandalay, including a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds in addition to Sinatra, which will be directed by Martin Scorsese.
Schulman is president of Women in Film currently, so expect to see her championing women filmmakers and talent. She is one of the few women currently in an executive position at STX Entertainment. Schulman also helped to program the Sundance Film Festival in its formative years.
During her many-year stint in the film industry she has worked with a virtual Who’s Who of filmmakers and talent including Scorsese, Alan Parker, Kenneth Branagh, Richard Linklater, Neil Burger, Paul Haggis, Richard Donner, Lisa Cholodenko, Andrew Bergman, and Antoine Fuqua as well as Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves, Pierce Brosnan, Vince Vaughn, Robert DeNiro, Charlize Theron, Ryan Reynolds, Don Cheadle, and Edward Norton.
She also produced with Cheadle and Mark Jonathan Harris the critically acclaimed documentary Darfur Now about of the devastating genocide in the Sudan. That picture from Warner Independent won the award for one of the top five documentaries from the National Board of Review the year it was released.
Prior to her stint at Mandalay, Schulman worked at Bulls Eye Entertainment. Before that, she worked for almost three years at Michael Ovitz‘s ill-fated APG as head of the film unit before that went belly up. Before that she worked at producer Mike Lobell’s production company.
STX Entertainment is led by Robert Simonds and was co-founded by TPG Capital, a leading private investment firm with $65 billion under management. Other investors include financial partner Hony Capital, a leading Chinese private-equity firm; and business interests of Gigi Pritzker and Beau Wrigley.
STX also sealed a deal earlier this month with China’s largest privately held film firm, Huayi Brothers Media Corp, in a three-year pact that begins in 2016. The Chinese company will partner on the 12-to-15-picture annual slate.
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