Scott Rudin
Scott Rudin is an American film, television and theatre producer. His films include the Academy Award Best Picture-winning No Country for Old Men, as well as Uncut Gems, Lady Bird, Fences, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, School of Rock, Zoolander, The Truman Show, Clueless, The Addams Family, and eight Wes Anderson films. On Broadway, he has won 17 Tony Awards for shows such as The Book of Mormon, Hello, Dolly!, The Humans, A View from the Bridge, Fences and Passion.
He is one of 21 people who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony.
In 2021, Rudin stepped back from his Broadway, film and streaming projects following allegations published by The Hollywood Reporter of abusive behavior towards his employees; Rudin's name was subsequently removed from a number of upcoming films, and Rudin's business relationship with the studio A24 was terminated. In 2025, he returned to Broadway as the producer of Little Bear Ridge Road, starring Laurie Metcalf.
Early life
Rudin was born and raised in Baldwin, New York, on Long Island, in a Jewish family. He attributes much of his interests and behavior to his upbringing.Career
At the age of 16, he started working as an assistant to theater producer Kermit Bloomgarden. Later, Rudin worked for producers Robert Whitehead and Emanuel Azenberg. Instead of attending college, Rudin took a job as a casting director and thereafter started his own company. His new firm cast many Broadway shows, including Annie for Mike Nichols. He also cast PBS's Verna: USO Girl, starring Sissy Spacek and William Hurt, and the mini-series The Scarlet Letter, starring Meg Foster, Kevin Conway and John Heard, as well as the films King of the Gypsies, The Wanderers, Simon with Alan Arkin, and Resurrection.Film producer
In 1980, Rudin moved to Los Angeles, taking up employment at Edgar J. Scherick Associates, where he served as producer on a variety of films, including I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can, the NBC miniseries Little Gloria... Happy at Last, and the Oscar-winning documentary He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin'.Rudin then formed his own company, Scott Rudin Productions. His first film under that banner was Gillian Armstrong's Mrs. Soffel. Not long afterwards, Rudin placed his production shingle in dormancy and joined 20th Century-Fox as an executive producer. At Fox, he met Jonathan Dolgen, a higher-level executive, with whom he worked again at Paramount Pictures years later. Rudin rose through the ranks at Fox and became president of production in 1986 at age 28.
His stint at the top of Fox was short-lived, and he soon left and entered into a producing deal with Paramount. On August 1, 1992, Rudin signed a deal with TriStar Pictures but soon moved back to Paramount. Rudin's first-look deal with Paramount lasted nearly 15 years, producing pictures including The First Wives Club, The Addams Family, Clueless, Sabrina and Sleepy Hollow.
After the resignation of Paramount's chairwoman Sherry Lansing in 2004 and the nearly simultaneous departure of Jonathan Dolgen, Rudin left Paramount and set a five-year first-look pact with Disney that allowed him to make films under their labels Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, and Miramax Films, whose founders Harvey and Bob Weinstein had departed. Previously, Harvey Weinstein and Rudin had public confrontations during the production of The Hours, which Rudin produced for Miramax Films when it was a studio subsidiary under Disney. Rudin later said he and Weinstein "are both control freaks. We both want to run our own shows. When I'm doing a Miramax movie, I work for him. And I don't like that feeling. I chafe under that. I especially chafe under it when I feel that I'm on a leash." Rudin's projects in the 2010s have included lower-budget, independent films. In 2017 and 2018, Rudin and studio A24 released three films about adolescence by first-time writer/directors: Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird, Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade and Jonah Hill's Mid90s. In 2015, he signed a television production deal with Fox.
Sony Pictures email leak
On December 9, 2014, a major illegal breach of Sony's computer systems by "Guardians of Peace" hackers using Shamoon malware led to disclosure of many gigabytes of stolen information, including internal company documents. In subsequent news coverage SPE Co-Chair Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin were noted to have had an email exchange about Pascal's upcoming encounter with President Barack Obama that included characterizations described as racist. The two had suggested that upon meeting the president they should mention films about African Americans, such as Django Unchained, 12 Years a Slave, The Butler, and Amistad which all discuss slavery in the United States or the pre-civil rights era. In the email thread, Rudin added, "I bet he likes Kevin Hart."Rudin later said that the e-mails were "private emails between friends and colleagues written in haste and without much thought or sensitivity." He added that he was "profoundly and deeply sorry".
Theater producer
Typically producing between two and five productions per year, Rudin was one of Broadway's most prolific commercial producers.His first Broadway play, David Henry Hwang's Face Value in 1993, was produced alongside Stuart Ostrow and Jujamcyn Theaters, and it closed after eight preview performances. He started a deal with Jujamcyn to develop and produce new plays for the theater chain. In 1994, Rudin won the Best Musical Tony Award for his production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Passion. The following year, he co-produced Kathleen Turner's Broadway comeback, Indiscretions, and Ralph Fiennes' New York stage debut in Hamlet. In 1996, Rudin produced the revival of the Stephen Sondheim and Larry Gelbart musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, for which Nathan Lane won his first Tony Award. His subsequent productions and co-productions have included Skylight, The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?, Seven Guitars, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, Copenhagen, Deuce, The History Boys, Beckett/Albee, Closer, The Blue Room, Doubt, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Year of Magical Thinking, A Behanding in Spokane, God of Carnage, The House of Blue Leaves, and Exit the King.
In 2010, Rudin and Carole Shorenstein Hays produced the first Broadway revival of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences, directed by Kenny Leon and starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis. Fences garnered ten Tony Award nominations and three wins, including Best Revival of a Play, Best Actor for Washington, and Best Actress for Davis. He would later produce the 2016 film adaptation of Fences.
The following year, Rudin was a producer for the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, which opened in March 2011 at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. The show won nine Tony Awards including Best Musical and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theatre Album. The production has played more than 3,740 Broadway performances as of March 15, 2020. The show has also played in London, Australia, Europe, Asia, and on tour across the United States.
Since 2011, Rudin has won Tony Awards for producing Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, David Hare's Skylight, Stephen Karam's The Humans, Ivo van Hove's staging of Arthur Miller's A View From The Bridge, and the record-breaking revival of Hello, Dolly! starring Bette Midler. Other notable productions include Larry David's Fish in the Dark, a hit comedy with more than $13.5 million in advance sales at the box office, a record at the time.
Rudin left the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Clybourne Park in February 2012, ahead of an April opening, due to a feud with writer Bruce Norris that was unrelated to the play.
In 2015, it was announced that Rudin would produce Groundhog Day, a musical adaptation of the 1993 film of the same title, originally starring Bill Murray. Tim Minchin wrote the music and lyrics, and screenwriter Danny Rubin wrote the book. Rudin withdrew from the production in June 2016, citing creative differences with the production team. Groundhog Day opened on Broadway in 2017 and was a financial failure, closing after just five months.
In 2013, after New York Times theater reporter Patrick Healy published an interview with Colm Toibin, the author of Rudin's financially unsuccessful The Testament of Mary, Rudin ran an advertisement in the Times, saying: "Let's give a big cuddly shout-out to Pat Healy, infant provocateur and amateur journalist at The New York Times. Keep it up, Pat -- one day perhaps you'll learn something about how Broadway works, and maybe even understand it."
In 2016, in a throwback to an earlier practice on Broadway, Rudin demanded that all critics attend the opening night performance of his production of The Front Page, which starred Nathan Lane, John Slattery, John Goodman, Holland Taylor, and Robert Morse. In a public dispute, The Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney, who had a conflict on the date of the opening, balked at the change, adding: "You know nobody works at that pace anymore, right?" Rudin shot back: "Critics reviewed shows on Broadway this way for 100 years. You can do it for one night. Get over it." Rooney's rave review eventually ran two days later than other New York critics, on October 23.