Scott Rudin

Scott Rudin (born July 14, 1958) is an American film producer and a theatrical producer. Rudin started to work as a theatre production assistant aged 16. In lieu of college, he took a job as a casting director and then started his own company. His firm cast many Broadway shows. Rudin moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and started to work at Edgar J. Scherick Associates. He formed his own company, Scott Rudin Productions, and his first film was Gillian Armstrong’s Mrs. Soffel. Soon after, he joined 20th Century-Fox as an executive producer, and eventually became president of production by 1986, at the age of 29. He entered into a producing deal with Paramount, where he stayed for almost 15 years. He eventually moved to Disney, where he made movies under the Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures, Hollywood Pictures and Miramax Films labels. In 2012, Rudin became one of the few people who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award, and the first producer to do so.

At the age of 16, he started working as an assistant to theatre producer Kermit Bloomgarden. Later, he worked for producers Robert Whitehead and Emanuel Azenberg. In lieu of attending college, Rudin took a job as a casting director and ended up starting his own company. His newly minted firm cast numerous Broadway shows, including Annie (1977) for Mike Nichols. He also cast PBS's Verna: USO Girl (1978), starring Sissy Spacek and William Hurt; and the mini-series The Scarlet Letter (1979) starring Meg Foster, Kevin Conway and John Heard; also, the films King of the Gypsies (1978), The Wanderers (1979), Simon (1980) with Alan Arkin and Resurrection (1980).

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 (1981), the NBC miniseries Little Gloria... Happy at Last (1982) and the Oscar-winning documentary He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' (1983).

Rudin then formed his own company, Scott Rudin Productions. His first film under that banner was Gillian Armstrong's Mrs. Soffel (1984). Not long after, 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 would be working once again at Paramount Pictures years later. Rudin rose through the ranks at Fox and became president of production by 1986 at the age of 29.

Rudin co-produced the unsuccessful staging of David Henry Hwang's Face Value with Stuart Ostrow and Jujamcyn Theaters. 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, along with others, produced Kathleen Turner's Broadway comeback, Indiscretions, and Ralph Fiennes' New York theatre 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, which starred Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella and Mark Linn-Baker.

In 2010, he co-produced, along with Carole Shorenstein Hays, the Broadway revival of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences, starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, which garnered ten Tony Award nominations and three wins, including Best Revival of a Play.

He has won fifteen Tonys and twelve Drama Desk Awards for his productions.

Rudin is the lead producer for the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, which opened in March 2011 at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre and won nine Tony Awards including best musical, and also a Grammy Award for Best Musical Album.

In 2015, it was announced that Rudin would produce Groundhog Day, a musical adaptation of the film Groundhog Day, originally starring Bill Murray. Tim Minchin, who penned the award-winning adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical, will write the music and lyrics. Danny Rubin, who co-wrote the screenplay for Groundhog Day along with Harold Ramis, will be writing the story. Groundhog Day will open on 9 March 2017.

In 2015 Rudin produced Larry David's Fish in the Dark, a hit comedy that took in "more than $13.5 million in advance sales at the box office [which] beats the previous record for a play, $13.05 million for the 2013 revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal," which was also a Rudin production.

Six Rudin productions received major Tony nominations in 2016. Nominated for Best Play were The Humans and King Charles III. Competing against Hamilton for Best Musical was Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed (with ten nominations, the second most after Hamilton). Three revivals were nominated for Best Revival: Blackbird, The Crucible and A View From the Bridge. Rudin was lead producer on all the productions except King Charles III.

On January 19, 2016, it was announced that Rudin would produce a revival of Hello, Dolly! on Broadway with Bette Midler starring in the title role.