James Vanderbilt
COO, Project X Entertainment
About Speaker
James Vanderbilt has been making stuff up for a living ever since he graduated from the University of Southern California’s Filmic Writing Program. A talented writer, director, and producer whose diverse catalogue of films range from heavy-hitting blockbusters to edge of your seat thrillers, Vanderbilt sold his first screenplay 48 hours before graduating. It was promptly not made. His directorial debut, Truth, which starred Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford, was named one of the Top 10 Films of 2015 by The New York Times. He has written and produced numerous films, including David Fincher's Zodiac, for which he was nominated for a Writer’s Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Roland Emmerich's White House Down, for which he was not. In 2019, Vanderbilt formed the independent production and financing company Project X Entertainment (PXE) with partners William Sherak and Paul Neinstein. With a full roster of projects set for release and in development, the company’s slate includes Paramount’s relaunch of Scream, co-written by Vanderbilt, Universal’s action/thriller Ambulance, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and directed by Michael Bay and the upcoming STXfilms’ horror/thriller Bed Rest, as well as Netflix’s The Night Agent, created by Shawn Ryan. His writing credits also include The Amazing Spider-Man films, Basic, The Rundown, The Losers, and Murder Mystery and its upcoming sequel, both starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, and both which he also produced. His other producing credits include the critically acclaimed Suspiria, directed by Luca Guadagnino, The House With a Clock In Its Walls, directed by Eli Roth, Fox Searchlight’s horror comedy Ready or Not, directed by Radio Silence, and the groundbreaking Netflix science fiction series, Altered Carbon. He lives in Malibu, California, with his wife, children, and dogs.