Producer of 300

Background:

“Being involved in movies is my passion. What's gotten me off the mat is the sense of the child in all of us. I feel like the same guy as I did back in the mail room, but with more wisdom, from the depths of experience to the heights.” Mark Canton

Studio executive and movie producer Mark Canton has made a name for himself as one of the most important forces in the entertainment business for more than two decades. Starting out in the mail room of Warner Bros. when he was still a student at UCLA, the industry mogul has held such positions as President of Worldwide Theatrical Production at Warner Bros. Picture, Chairman of the Columbia Tristar Motion Picture Companies and, more recently, Chairman and CEO of Atmosphere Entertainment MM LLC. He is also the founder of The Canton Company. As a producer, Canton is known for producing such films as the Christmas hit “Jack Frost” (1998), “Get Carter” (2000), “Angel Eyes” (2001), Taking Lives” (2004), “Land of the Dead” (2005), “300” (2006), “The Spiderwick Chronicles” (2008) and the forthcoming “Fame” (2009), “A Perfect Getaway” (2009) and “Piranha 3-D” (2009).

Canton has been divorced from his wife of nearly one and a half decade, the Oscar-winning producer Wendy Finerman, since 1999. They have three children together.

Canton was once romantically involved with Aimee Peyronnet.

Father of 3

Childhood and Family:

Mark Canton was born on June 19, 1949, in New York, New York. His father, Arthur Canton, worked as publicly aide to filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock and Sam Spiegel before becoming a publicly executive for such companies as MGM, Warners and Columbia, and his mother, Shirley Canton, died in May 1996. Mark has an older brother, Neil Canton, who is also a producer.

Raised in Bayside in Queens, New York, Mark attended Marie Curie Junior High School and graduated from Bayside High School in 1967. He then moved to California to attend University of California at Los Angeles and graduated magna cum laude in 1971.

Mark married producer Wendy Finerman (born on August 2, 1960, in California) in 1985, but they later divorced in 1999 after having been together for 14 years. The couple has three children, two of whom are daughter Dorothy Canton (born in 1989) and son Henry Canton (born in July 1991).

President of Warner Bros. Picture

Career:

Son of a movie publicity and marketing executive, the teen Mark Canton was inspired to pursue a career in show biz after visiting the office of film producer Sam Spiegel, to whom his father worked as publicly aide. He was fascinated by the line of many Academy Awards on his mantel and by a big picture of Mr. Spiegel standing on the deck of his yacht at the Cannes Film Festival, surrounded by gorgeous women. A magna cum laude UCLA graduate, the New York native worked in the mail room at Warner Bros. while still a student in that university and moved on to become assistant to Mike Medavoy, who was then president of production at UA, after completing his college. In 1973, he was recruited as assistant to director/producer Franklin J. Schaffner on the Oscar nominee for Best Original Dramatic Score, “Papillon.”

Canton's career showed significant increase in the late 1970s. He was appointed as vice president of motion picture development at MGM in 1978 and became executive vice president at the Jon Peters Organization in the following year. Thanks to help of Michael Ovitz, Canton joined Warner Bros. Pictures in 1980 as vice president of production and within three years, he had become the studio's Senior Vice President before being named President of Worldwide Theatrical Production in 1985. With Warner Bros., Canton was responsible in creating such successful film franchises as “Batman,” ' “National Lampoon's Vacation” and “Lethal Weapon.” Besides, he was able to bring some of the studio's most prospering movies to the screen, including Tim Burton's “Pee Wee's Big Adventure” (1985), “Beetle Juice” (1988) and “Batman” (1989), Bruce Beresford's “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989), which won four Oscars including Best Picture, and Martin Scorsese's “GoodFellas” (1990), as well as set into production a number of noted hits like “Purple Rain” (1984), “The Mission” (1986), “The Witches of Eastwick” (1987), “Above the Law” (1988) and “Presumed Innocent” (1990).

1991 saw Canton leave his position as executive vice president of worldwide motion picture production at Warner Bros. He then joined his longtime co-worker, Sony Pictures Entertainment chief Peter Guber, as Chairman of Columbia Pictures, replacing Frank Price, and by 1994, he had been promoted to president of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Companies, with all creative, operational and direction duty for Columbia Pictures, Triumph Films, Sony Pictures Entertainment's international theatrical operations and Columbia TriStar's strategic motion picture confederations. Noted for releasing major flops like “Geronimo” (1993) and “I'll Do Anything” (1994), Canton was fired by Columbia in September 1996 and replaced by Amy Pascal. An ex-colleague at Columbia stated, “Mark has lowest common-denominator movie-goer's taste. He wanted very simple, very clear, very straightforward emotions.”

Shortly after his departure, Canton's last films with Sony enjoyed significant success. Among them were Cameron Crowe's “Jerry Maguire” (1996, starred Tom Cruise), the Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones vehicle “Men in Black” (1997), the Wolfgang Petersen-directed “Air Force One” (1997, starred Harrison Ford), the Julia Roberts comedy/romance “My Best Friend's Wedding” (1997) and the Oscar-winning “As Good As It Gets” (1997, starred Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt).

In 1997, Canton established an independent production company called The Canton Company and signed a three-year production deal with Warner Bros. Under his own production entity, the gifted Canton scored his first box office hit with “Jack Frost,” a 1998 comedy/drama directed by Troy Miller and starring Michael Keaton in the title role. He went on to serve as one of executive producers of the television sitcom “Jack & Jill” (The WB, 1999-2001) and produce such movies as the highly awaited remake of the British cult classic “Get Carter” (2000), helmed by Stephen Kay and starring Sylvester Stallone, Miranda Richardson, Rachel Leigh Cook and Michael Caine, the Antony Hoffman-helmed thriller “Red Planet” (2000), starring Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Benjamin Bratt, Tom Sizemore and Simon Baker, among others, and Luis Mandoki's “Angel Eyes” (2001), starring Jennifer Lopez and James Caviezel. In 2002, he executive produced Columbia Pictures' “Trapped,” a next project with director Luis Mandoki with Charlize Theron, Courtney Love, Stuart Townsend and Kevin Bacon starring in the roles of Karen Jennings, Cheryl Hickey, Dr. Will Jennings and Joe Hickey, respectively.

It was also in 2002 that Canton joined Artists Production Group (APG) as a partner in addition to serving as Chairman and CEO. Along with Mark Kimsey of Daedalus Media Partners, he formed a new enterprising venture, Atmosphere Entertainment, in which he is now serves as Chairman and CEO. Through his new company, he has produced “Taking Lives” (2004, starred Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Kiefer Sutherland and Gena Rowlands), “Godsend” (2004, starred Robert De Niro, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Greg Kinnear), the George A. Romero thriller “Land of the Dead” (2005), the critically-acclaimed history/war “300” (2006) and New Line Cinema's drama/comedy “Full of It” (2007).

Recently, in 2008, Canton served as the producer of “The Spiderwick Chronicles.” The adventure film, directed by Mark Waters, starred Freddie Highmore as Jared Grace / Simon Grace, Sarah Bolger as Mallory Grace, Nick Nolte as Mulgarath. His upcoming projects are “A Perfect Getaway” (2009), a thriller starring Milla Jovovich, “Fame” (2009), a musical directed by Kevin Tancharoen and scripted by Allison Burnett, and “Piranha 3-D” (2009), a horror/thriller by director/scriptwriter Alexandre Aja.

Awards:
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