Mike Mitchell

Mike Mitchell (birthname: Michael Mitchell) is an acclaimed animation and animation/live-action hybrid filmmaker who has made movies for most of Hollywood’s major animation studios, including DreamWorks Animation, Warner Animation Group, and Nickelodeon Movies. Mitchell, however, launched his directing career with a triplet of live-action comedies, starting with Touchstone Pictures’ Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo (1999), starring Rob Schneider (grossing $93 million worldwide), followed by DreamWorks Pictures’ Surviving Christmas (2004), starring Ben Affleck, James Gandolfini, Christina Applegate, and Catherine O’Hara (earning $15 million globally); and then Disney’s superhero comedy, Sky High (2005), starring Kelly Preston, Michael Angarano, and Kurt Russell (grossing a solid $86.4 million worldwide).

Mitchell’s animated feature directorial debut was the DreamWorks Animation/Paramount Pictures blockbuster sequel, Shrek Forever After The Final Chapter (2010), marking the fourth installment in the Shrek series and co-starring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews, and Walt Dohrn, and earning an excellent $756 million global gross after premiering at the Tribeca film festival.

Mike Mitchell was director of the animated and live-action jukebox musical, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011), with the voices of Jason Lee, David Cross, Jenny Slade, Justin Long, Amy Poehler, Anna Faris, and Christina Applegate, and while it received poor critical reviews, it also grossed a robust $342 million (on an $80 million budget). Mitchell directed the live-action sequences for Paramount/Nickelodeon’s follow-up sequel, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015), with Tom Kenny, Antonio Banderas, Clancy Brown, and Bill Fagerbakke, earning a solid gross of $325 million.

Mitchell directed his first non-sequel, fully animated feature with DreamWorks Animation’s jukebox musical, Trolls (2016), based on Thomas Dam’s Good Luck Trolls dolls created by Thomas Dam, and featuring the voices of Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Zooey Deschanel, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Christine Baranski, Russell Brand, John Cleese, and Gwen Stefani, and which earned a $347 million global box office. Mitchell as director joined the creative team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller for the excellent but commercially disappointing ($199.6 million) sequel, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019), with the voice cast of Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, Charlie Day, and Maya Rudolph.

Mike Mitchell lined up his next DreamWorks Animation project with the sequel co-directed by Stephanie Ma, Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024), the fourth installment in the Kung Fu Panda series, with the voice cast of Jack Black, Awkwafina, Viola Davis, Dustin Hoffman, James Hong, Bryan Cranston, Ian McShane, and Ke Huy Quan.

Mitchell, in his capacity as an animator, has served as an additional story artist on Antz (1998), Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), and Sausage Party (2016), as well as a creative consultant on Kung Fu Panda (2008) and as a story artist on Monsters vs. Aliens (2009). Mitchell also took on supporting voice roles in the animated features Monkeybone (2001), Monsters vs. Aliens, Shrek Forever After, Megamind (2010), Puss in Boots (2011), Penguins of Madagascar (2014), Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016), Trolls, and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.