Jake Eberts
Jake Eberts (born
July 10,
1941) is a movie producer, executive and financier. Known for risk-taking and producing a consistently high caliber of movies including such award-winning titles as
Chariots of Fire (1981, uncredited ),
Gandhi (1982),
Dances with Wolves (1990), and the successful animated feature
Chicken Run (2000).
Born
John David Eberts in
Montreal,
Quebec, Jake Eberts grew up in Montreal and
Arvida. He attended
Bishop's College School in
Lennoxville, Quebec and graduated from
McGill University (Bachelor of Chemical Engineering 1962) and
Harvard Business School (MBA 1966). Eberts' working career began as a start-up engineer for
L'Air Liquide in
Spain,
Italy,
Germany and
France. He then spent three years as a
Wall Street investor. He moved to
London,
England in 1971, where he joined
Oppenheimer & Co., rising to the position of managing director of the UK brokerage and investment company in 1976.
With no apparent prior interest in film, about 1977 he turned to film financing, and joined
David Putnam in founding
Goldcrest Films, an independent film production company, for which he served as president and CEO. His first venture was the animated movie
Watership Down.
While with the company, in 1979 he made a disastrous personal investment of US$750,000 in
Zulu Dawn, which would take him almost a decade to recover from. He obviously learned a great deal from this setback, as the output of the company was for the most part exceptional and financially rewarding, with such other films to its credit as
The Howling,
Chariots of Fire,
Local Hero,
Gandhi,
The Killing Fields and
The Dresser.
Chariots of Fire and
Gandhi won back-to-back
Oscars in 1981 and 1982 respectively, and in the period from 1977 to 1983 the company's films received 30 Oscar nominations and won 15. He developed a reputation as an astute and shrewd financier with impeccable taste in material. Rather than seek new talent, he chose to support established directors such as Sir
Richard Attenborough,
Roland Joffé,
Jean-Jacques Annaud,
John Boorman, many of whom have worked with him on several pictures.
He resigned from the company in 1984, but returned a year later to attempt to rescue it financially. From its early success of just a few years earlier, when it was seen as a possible saviour of the British film industry, the company had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the failure of three high-budget films -
Revolution and
The Mission (1985) and
Absolute Beginners (1986) [
1].
Eberts continued on until 1987 when he resigned for the last time. The company would continued on under new ownership. Eberts detailed the disaster in his 1990 memoir,
My Indecision is Final: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Goldcrest Films (co-authored with (with
Terry Ilott).
Meanwhile, in 1985 he founded
Allied Filmmakers, an affiliate of
Pathe. With this company, in 1986 he made his debut as executive producer for Annaud's
The Name of the Rose, based on the best-selling novel by
Umberto Eco. He since produced or executive produced John Boorman's
Hope and Glory (1987), his second pair of back-to-back Oscar winners
Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and
Dances With Wolves (1990),
Robert Redford's
A River Runs Through It (1992) and
Tim Burton's adaptation of
Roald Dahl's
James and the Giant Peach (1995). During this period Eberts was also responsible as executive for the expensive flop,
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), which thankfully went on to popular success in home
videocassette and
DVD rentals. [
2]
Eberts moved to Paris about 1991.
Dances with Wolves was an early picture of Eberts to feature a native American theme. Later productions included (as producer or executive producer),
Bruce Beresford's
Black Robe (1991),
The Education of Little Tree (1997), and Richard Attenborough's
Grey Owl (1998). The latter three pictures were all produced in
Canada.
He also served as a co-executive producer (with
Jeffrey Katzenberg) of
Chicken Run (2000).
In 2002, Eberts, became chairman of
National Geographic Feature Films (NGFF) and executive produced such titles as the live action animal feature
Two Brothers by Jean-Jacques Annaud. He has also branched out into documentaries including
Prisoner of Paradise, which was nominated for Best Picture in the feature documentary category at the 2003 Academy Awards, and
America's Heart and Soul (2004). Under his direction, NGFF had an enormous success in 2005 by distributing the sleeper documentary
March of the Penguins (original French title,
La Marche de l'empereur).
In 1992 Eberts became an Officer of the
Order of Canada. He was also awarded honorary doctorates by McGill University in 1998 and by
Bishop's University in 1999. He serves on the Board of the
Sundance Institute and the
Sundance Channel. He is also Co-Founder and CEO of
MPI International, which provides high-speed, two-way video transmission capabilities to
telcos, cable companies, hotels, hospitals, and schools.
By 2005, Eberts had been associated with films garnering 66 Oscar nominations, including nine for Best Picture. In 2006,
March of the Penguins won the Oscar for Best Documentary.
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