Michael De Luca
Michael De Luca serves as Co-Chair and CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, encompassing Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation. WBMPG continues to build on its legacy of iconic feature franchises and world-class cinema, working across all genres with both established and emerging talent–in front of and behind the camera–to deliver the industry’s most diverse slate of films for a global audience.
De Luca serves as Co-Chair and CEO with Pamela Abdy, sharing oversight of the Studio’s global theatrical production, marketing, and distribution operations. In addition to his Motion Picture Group responsibilities, De Luca, along with Abdy, has curatorial oversight of WBD’s TCM (Turner Classic Movies) network, in partnership with filmmakers Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese. He joined Warner Bros. in 2022.
De Luca continues to help shatter records, most recently with the incredible global smash success of A Minecraft Movie, which grossed over $313 million worldwide on opening weekend. Earning a stunning $163 million domestically, A Minecraft Movie marks the biggest opening of 2025 and the largest opening for a movie based on a video game.
De Luca has played a pivotal role in the success of several recent films including Beetlejuice Beetlejuice which dominated the worldwide box office for three consecutive weeks in 2024; Wonka which brought in over $634 million worldwide in 2023; Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire in partnership with Legendary, which stands as the highest grossing Monsterverse film to date; and Dune: Part Two, which eclipsed the first film at $715 million worldwide and held the #1 spot at the global box office for three consecutive weekends. These hits propelled Warner Bros. to become the first studio to cross $1 billion at the international box office in April 2024, a record pace for the studio.
Under De Luca’s leadership in 2023, the studio reached unprecedented heights with the record-shattering global phenomenon Barbie. With over $1.4 billion worldwide, the eight-time Academy Award nominated film from Greta Gerwig marked the highest grossing opening ever for a female director, was the highest grossing movie worldwide of the year, and was the highest grossing film of all time in Warner Bros.’ 100-year history.
Prior to joining Warner Bros., De Luca served as MGM’s Motion Picture Group Chairman, overseeing development, production, and post-production for all MGM and Orion films including Sarah Polley’s Academy Award Best Picture-nominated Women Talking, which earned Polley the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver; Paul Thomas Anderson’s Academy Award Best Picture-nominated Licorice Pizza, which marked MGM’s first such nomination since Rain Man in 1988; Creed III, starring and directed by Michael B. Jordan; Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan’s The Addams Family 2; and Ron Howard’s 13 Lives.
An esteemed and prolific producer with three decades in the film business, De Luca has been nominated three times for an Academy Award for Best Picture (for David Fincher’s The Social Network, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield; Bennett Miller’s Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill; and Paul Greengrass’s Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi). He won the Emmy Award, Golden Globe, and PGA Award for the FX series Shogun and was additionally nominated as producer of the 89th and the 90th Academy Awards and Showtime’s Escape at Dannemora. De Luca produced the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey, as well as its two sequels–Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed–starring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, for Universal Pictures. The trilogy was a global phenomenon and a box office sensation that grossed over $1 billion internationally.
Over the course of his career, De Luca has held several key positions in the film industry. At age 27, De Luca served as one of the youngest heads of production in Hollywood history when he was appointed President and COO of New Line Productions, where he helped to launch lucrative franchises including Friday, Blade, Austin Powers, and Rush Hour. During his tenure, he championed such groundbreaking sleeper hits as Se7en, Wag the Dog, Pleasantville, Magnolia, I Am Sam, and Boogie Nights, and helped to launch the directing careers of Jay Roach, Gary Ross, Alan and Albert Hughes, F. Gary Gray, the Farrelly brothers, David Fincher, and Paul Thomas Anderson. From New Line, De Luca went on to serve as DreamWorks’ Head of Production from 2001 to 2004, overseeing the live-action division and the production of such films as Old School and Anchorman, which continued the rise of both Will Ferrell and Todd Phillips.
Beginning in 2004, De Luca launched his own production company, Michael De Luca Productions, which had a development and production agreement with Columbia Pictures that brought the studio three Academy Award Best Picture nominees–The Social Network, Moneyball, and Captain Phillips–as well as mainstream success with such films as Ghost Rider and 21. As an independent producer, De Luca focused on developing provocative specialized films with visionary filmmakers, as well as elevated genre films with franchise potential. Prior to launching a multi-year production deal at Universal Pictures, De Luca served as President of Production for Columbia Pictures, where he revitalized the studio’s slate with commercial fare and notable filmmakers, including the thriller The Shallows, starring Blake Lively and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, and the western The Magnificent Seven, starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt and directed by Antoine Fuqua.