Name Joshua Astrachan | Role Film producer | |
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Movies Friends with Kids, Short Term 12, A Prairie Home Companion, The Company, That's What She Said Similar Lucy Barzun Donnelly, Joey McFarland, Nat Sanders, Wren Arthur, John Sloss | ||
Conversations with headsets joshua astrachan
Joshua Astrachan is an American film producer, perhaps best known for working with American film director, Robert Altman. He currently works as a producer with Animal Kingdom, a film and television production company he co-founded in 2012. He lives and works in New York City.
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Career
For the better part of a decade, Joshua Astrachan was a producer for the American film director, Robert Altman. He produced Altman’s last film, A Prairie Home Companion (2006), written by Garrison Keillor and starring Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson and Kevin Kline.
Astrachan also produced The Company, Altman’s narrative feature set in the world of dance, starring Neve Campbell, James Franco, Malcolm McDowell and the company members of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. He co-produced the critically acclaimed, Academy Award-winning and seven-time Oscar-nominated Gosford Park starring, among others, Maggie Smith, Clive Owen, Kelly Macdonald, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jeremy Northam, Emily Watson and Bob Balaban. For Gosford Park, Altman received the Golden Globe and New York Film Critics Circle Award as Best Director.
In 2007, Astrachan founded Locomotive, a film and television production company, with producing partner Lucy Barzun Donnelly. The first film to go out under the Locomotive banner, produced by Ms. Donnelly and Rachael Horovitz, was Grey Gardens, the critically acclaimed feature for HBO, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. Grey Gardens won 6 Primetime Emmy Awards alongside two Golden Globes and the Producer’s Guild, Broadcast Film Critics Association and Television Critics Association Awards for the best motion picture made for television. Also with Locomotive, Astrachan produced Jennifer Westfeldt’s celebrated ensemble comedy Friends with Kids, starring Westfeldt, Adam Scott, Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig, Chris O’Dowd, Maya Rudolph, Megan Fox and Edward Burns. The film premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and was theatrically released by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions in March, 2012. The film was named by New York Magazine’s film critic, David Edelstein, as one of the 10 best films of 2012.
In July 2012, under the Animal Kingdom banner he produced Short Term 12 by writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton. The film stars Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr, Kaitlyn Dever, Rami Malek and Keith Stanfield – and premiered at SXSW in 2013, where it was awarded the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. The film has since won awards at, among others, festivals from Little Rock to Los Angeles to Locarno – where the film had its international premiere. At Locarno, Brie Larson was also honored with the Best Actress Award. Released by Cinedgim, Short Term 12 has been one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year – and on December 2, 2013, Ms. Larson was also awarded the prize for Best Actress at the 23rd IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards in New York City.
With Animal Kingdom, Astrachan has recently produced Joachim Trier’s English-language feature debut, LOUDER THAN BOMBS (Cannes Official Selection 2015) and Justin Tipping’s debut feature, KICKS; and executive produced David Robert Mitchell’s IT FOLLOWS (Critics’ Week, Cannes 2014); and TRESPASS AGAINST US, starring Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson, written by Alastair Siddons and directed by Adam Smith.
Personal life
Astrachan is married to the American artist Ellen Berkenblit.