Akiva J. Goldsman is an American film and television writer, director, and
producer. He received an Academy Award for Best
Adapted Screenplay for the 2001 film, A Beautiful Mind, which also won the Oscar
for Best Picture. Goldsman has been exclusively involved
with Hollywood films. His filmography also includes the films Batman Forever
and its sequel Batman & Robin, I Am Legend and Cinderella Man and numerous
rewrites both credited and uncredited. In 2006 Goldsman re-teamed with A
Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard for a high profile project, adapting Dan
Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code for Howard's film version, receiving mixed
reviews for his work. Life and career
Akiva Goldsman was born on July 7, 1962 in New York City, the son of Tev
Goldsman, a therapist, and Mira Rothenberg, a child psychologist. His
family is Jewish. Both of his parents ran a group home for emotionally
disturbed children. Goldsman's parents were occupied with their work, and
Goldsman said, "By the time I was 10 or 12, I realized they had taken my parents
away from me. I wanted nothing more to do with that world. I wanted to be a
writer. I had a fantasy that someday I'd see my name on a book." In 1983,
Goldsman attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. After
graduation, Goldsman studied creative writing at New York University and began
writing screenplays. In 1994, he wrote the screenplay that
would become the film Silent Fall. Afterward, director Joel Schumacher
hired Goldsman to write The Client. In the late 1990s, Akiva Goldsman wrote
screenplays for A Time to Kill and Batman & Robin, which were considered
subpar quality and got him nominated for the Golden Raspberry Awards. Goldsman
came to the realization, "I sort of got lost. I was writing away from what I
knew. It's a little like a cat chasing its tail. Once you start making movies
that are less than satisfying, you start to lose your opportunity to make the
satisfying ones. People are not serving them up to you, saying, 'You're the guy
we want for this.'" Goldsman appealed to producer Brian Grazer to write the
screenplay for A Beautiful Mind and ultimately won an Academy Award for
Writing Adapted Screenplay. The star of A Beautiful Mind, Russell Crowe, later
invited Goldsman and director Ron Howard to film Cinderella Man, and Goldsman
wrote the film's screenplay. Goldsman has a production company at
Warner Bros. called Weed Road Pictures. On April 6, 2010, it was announced that
he will produce a PG-13 remake of the Troma cult film The Toxic Avenger. On
September 8, 2010, it was announced that he would write the first season of the
television series based on the novels of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.
The project is currently in "development hell".
Goldsman produced the Universal Pictures feature Lone Survivor, from
writer/director Peter Berg, based on the book, Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness
Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, by Marcus
Luttrell. It tells the story of Luttrell's Navy SEAL team in 2005
Afghanistan, on a mission to kill a terrorist leader. The movie starred Mark
Wahlberg, Ben Foster and Taylor Kitsch, and was released in 2013.
Goldsman made his feature film directing debut with Winter's Tale, a film
adaption of the Mark Helprin novel. Goldsman worked for seven years on
developing the project with Warner Bros. Pictures, finally getting a green light
on the script. The principal cast consisted of Colin Farrell, Russell
Crowe, Jessica Brown Findlay, Jennifer Connelly, Will Smith and William Hurt.
The film was released on February 14, 2014. 2015 direct the Horror thriller
film Stephanie, with Frank Grillo in the leading role. Goldsman co-wrote and
produced the film adaption of Dark Tower, which is set for an release on 13
January 2017. In June 2015, Paramount Pictures
announced that Goldsman would be heading a team of writers and filmmakers to
create a multifilm cinematic universe branching out from Hasbro's Transformers
franchise. = Fringe=
In 2008, Goldsman joined the first season crew of the FOX horror/mystery
series Fringe, as writer, director, and consulting producer. The first episode
Goldsman directed and wrote was "Bad Dreams". In its fifth season, Goldsman
remained a consulting producer. Episodes he contributed to included:
"Bad Dreams" "The Road Not Taken"
"There's More Than One of Everything" "A New Day in the Old Town"
"Peter" "Brown Betty"
"Over There" "Over There"
"Subject 13" "Stowaway"
"Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" "The Day We Died"
"Neither Here Nor There" "Subject 9"
"Making Angels" "Nothing as It Seems"
"Letters of Transit" "Brave New World"
"Brave New World" = Personal life=
Goldsman's second wife, film producer Rebecca Spikings-Goldsman, died of a
heart attack on July 6, 2010, at the age of 42. Rebecca was the daughter of
producer Barry Spikings. Filmography
References Further reading
Thane, Christopher. "Swimming with sharks". Fade In 5: 17.
Divine, Christian. "Peace of mind". Creative Screenwriting 9: 69, 71–74.
Fleming, Michael. "Good as Goldsman". Fade In 9: [50]–52.
External links Akiva Goldsman at the Internet Movie
Database