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 with Pamela Abdy.
In addition to his Motion Picture Group responsibilities, De Luca, along with Abdy, has curatorial oversight of WBD’s Turner Classic Movies network, in partnership with filmmakers Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.
As Co-Chair and CEO of the Motion Picture Group, De Luca shares oversight of the Studio’s global theatrical production, marketing, and distribution operations, which recently reached a new milestone as the first studio in 2024 to cross $1 billion at the international box office at the fastest pace ever for the company. Leading the Studio’s biggest releases this year so far is Warner Bros./Legendary’s Dune: Part Two and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Both films held the #1 spot at the box office internationally and globally for three weekends in a row.
The Studio also shattered records in 2023 with the global phenomenon Barbie that brought in over $1.4 billion worldwide and was nominated for eight Academy Awards®. The film from Greta Gerwig won Best Song for Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” and marked the highest grossing opening ever for a female director, the largest movie globally of the year, and the highest grossing film of all time in Warner Bros. 100-year history. Other recent releases include Wonka which grossed over $630 million worldwide and the Academy Award®-nominated The Color Purple. Upcoming releases include Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Watchers, Horizon: An American Saga, Trap, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Joker: Folie à Deux and The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.
Prior to joining Warner Bros., DeLuca served as MGM’s Motion Picture Group Chairman, overseeing development, production, and post-production for all MGM and Orion films. He oversaw studio hits such as 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 won in 1988; Creed 3, starring and directed by Michael B. Jordan; Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan’s Adam’s 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 of the Year (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); and three times for an Emmy Award as producer of the 89th and the 90th Academy Awards®, and Ben Stiller’s award-winning Escape At Dannemora for Showtime. Additionally, he has been nominated four times for a Producers Guild of America Award. De Luca also 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 western The Magnificent Seven, starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt and directed by Antoine Fuqua.