Neal H. Moritz

Neal H. Moritz is an American film and television producer who was born on June 6, 1959. After graduating from college at Westwood, he earned a master's degree in 1985, which led to a startup of his own production company Neal Moritz Productions. He had a production deal with Paramount Pictures. The first movie he produced is Framed (1990) In 1990, Moritz partnered with ex-United Artists employee David Heyman to start out Moritz-Heyman Productions. The two men have collaborated on films Juice (1992), The Stöned Age (1994) and Blind Justice (1994). Additionally, it partnered with commercial producer Bruce Mellon to start out Original Film in 1993, to produce commercials and music videos. After Heyman left, he signed a production deal with Columbia Pictures in 1996, after a brief deal with 20th Century Fox expired. Through his Original Film company, he produced two films in 1997, the disaster film Volcano (1997) and the slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). The success of the latter saw him producing a sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), as well as various slashers like Urban Legend (1998) and Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000), as well as Soul Survivors (2001). In 1998, he produced the TV movie The Rat Pack (1998) for HBO, which marked for the first time seeing him working with director Rob Cohen. On the same year, his Original Film company signed a deal with Newmarket Capital Group to produce lower budget films. Through his deal with Newmarket, he oversaw the teen fins Cruel Intentions (1999) and The Skulls (2000), both of them received two direct-to-video sequels. In 1999, his first foray on TV was the show Shasta McNasty (1999), and at the same time he made its foray onto the comedy market with the films Blue Streak (1999) and Held Up (1999). In 2001, after years of making teen films, he made its first foray by producing the action film The Fast and the Furious (2001), which marked the first time he ever met him with star Vin Diesel. The success of the film spawned many sequels and many imitators like xXx (2002), S.W.A.T. (2003) and Torque (2004). In 2002, he partnered with agent Marty Adelstein in launching the management company Original, and they spawned a division Original Television, of which signed a deal with 20th Century Fox Television. His venture produced Tru Calling (2003), Point Pleasant (2005) and the most successful of all time, Prison Break (2005) and it went defunct in 2004. He continued making films from the time period, including Stealth (2005), Gridiron Gang (2006), Click (2006) (with friend and rival Columbia affiliated producer Adam Sandler), I Am Legend (2007), Vantage Point (2008), The Bounty Hunter (2010) and The Green Hornet (2011) (with friend and the up and coming team of writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg), while working on "Fast & Furious" sequels. In 2006, Original Film reactivated TV production by signing a deal with Sony Pictures Television, and the following year he made its first foray onto family films, Evan Almighty (2007). In 2012, he worked with MGM and Columbia on 21 Jump Street (2012) and it's sequel 22 Jump Street (2014). His TV work with Sony Pictures Television included the shows The Big C (2010) and Save Me (2013). In 2015, he produced the most successful family film of all time, Goosebumps (2015) with Sony Pictures Animation, which was followed up in 2018 by Goosebumps 2: Slappy's Revenge (2018). On the same year, he acquired the rights to Valiant Comics, resulting in the creation of Bloodshot (2020). In 2017, Moritz signed a film production deal with Paramount Pictures (which Moritz worked with it back in the 1980s). His first film with Paramount was Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). He continued to produce TV shows for Sony, like Preacher (2016), S.W.A.T. (2017) and The Boys (2019), and for Universal, the show Happy! (2017). He was currently in post-production on the film F9: The Fast Saga (2021), which is scheduled for release on Memorial Day 2021, which changed from release dates many times during the COVID-19 pandemic.