Akiva Goldsman

Akiva J. Goldsman (born July 7, 1962) is an American screenwriter, director, and producer known for his work on motion pictures and adaptations of popular novels.

Goldsman's filmography as a screenwriter includes Batman Forever and its sequel Batman & Robin; I, Robot; I Am Legend; Cinderella Man, and numerous rewrites that are both credited and uncredited. He also wrote more than a dozen episodes for the science fiction television series Fringe.

In 2002, Goldsman received the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, which also won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In 2006, Goldsman re-teamed withA Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard to adapt Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code for Howard's film. He also wrote the screenplay for its 2009 prequel Angels & Demons.

Akiva Goldsman was born in New York to Jewish parents and raised in Brooklyn Heights. His parents, Tev Goldsman and Mira Rothenberg, were both clinical child psychologists who ran a group home for emotionally disturbed children. After graduating from Saint Ann's School, which is also in Brooklyn Heights, he received his bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University and attended the graduate fiction writing program at New York University. Many of his connections were made at Saint Ann's.

Goldsman has a production company at Warner Bros. named Weed Road Pictures.

Goldsman produced the Universal Pictures feature Lone Survivor, from writer/director Peter Berg, based on the book Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 by Marcus Luttrell. It tells the story of Luttrell's Navy SEAL team in 2005 Afghanistan, on a mission to kill a terrorist leader. The movie starred Mark Wahlberg, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster and Taylor Kitsch, and was released in 2013.

Goldsman made his feature film directing debut with Winter's Tale, a film adaption of the Mark Helprin novel, The principal cast consisted of Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe, Jessica Brown Findlay, Jennifer Connelly, Will Smith and William Hurt. The film was released on February 14, 2014. He also directed the horror thriller film Stephanie (2017), with Frank Grillo in the leading role, and co-wrote and produced the film adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, which was released on August 4, 2017, and was one of Goldsman's post Apotheosis films.

In June 2015, Paramount Pictures announced that Goldsman would head a team of writers and filmmakers to create a multifilm cinematic universe branching out from Hasbro's Transformers franchise. In 2017, his Weed Road company was signed with Paramount.

Goldsman was revealed in September 2018 to have been on the writing staff for Star Trek: Picard, revolving around the later years of the character of Jean-Luc Picard.

Fringe

In 2008, Goldsman joined the first season crew of the Fox horror/mystery series Fringe as writer, director, and consulting producer. The first episode Goldsman directed and wrote was "Bad Dreams". In its fifth season, Goldsman remained a consulting producer. Episodes he contributed to included:

• "Bad Dreams" (01.17)
• "The Road Not Taken" (01.19)
• "There's More Than One of Everything" (01.20)
• "A New Day in the Old Town" (02.01)
• "Peter" (02.16)
• "Brown Betty" (02.20)
• "Over There (Part 1)" (02.22)
• "Over There (Part 2)" (02.23)
• "Subject 13" (03.15)
• "Stowaway" (03.17)
• "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" (03.19)
• "The Day We Died" (03.22)
• "Neither Here Nor There" (04.01)
• "Subject 9" (04.04)
• "Making Angels" (04.11)
• "Nothing as It Seems" (04.16)
• "Letters of Transit" (04.19)
• "Brave New World (Part 1)" (04.21)
• "Brave New World (Part 2)" (04.22)

Goldsman's first wife, film producer Rebecca Spikings-Goldsman, died of a heart attack on July 6, 2010, at the age of 42. Rebecca was the daughter of producer Barry Spikings.

In 2012, Akiva met his second wife Joann Richter. The couple were married in 2014 and have two daughters, and divide their time between Los Angeles and New York.

Film

Television

Acting credits

In 2016, it was announced that Goldsman would script an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel. Its final release date is still unknown. In July 2017, Paramount Pictures announced plans to make a film adaptation of the novel Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy with Goldsman as producer.