Nicholas Stoller

Nicholas Stoller is a director/producer/writer known best as the director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall in 2008 (his debut), starring Kristen Bell, Jason Segel, Mila Kunis, and Russell Brand, and for writing, producing, and directing the 2010 sequel, Get Him to the Greek, with Jonah Hill and Russell Brand.

Stoller’s film career—a significant portion of it in collaboration with Jason Segel–has regularly alternated between purely writing, directing, and producing projects, as well as combinations of all or part of the three crafts. Thus, while his film debut was only as co-writer (with Judd Apatow) of Fun with Dick and Jane (2005), with Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni, as well as Yes Men (2008), with Carrey, Zooey Deschanel, and Bradley Cooper under Peyton Reed’s direction, in between these, Nicholas Stoller had his Forgetting Sarah Marshall directing assignment, followed by Get Him to the Greek.

Stoller was also co-writer only of 20^th Century Fox’s Gulliver’s Travels (2010), with Jack Black, Segel, and Emily Blunt, and then co-writer (with leading man Segel) and executive producer of Disney’s The Muppets, with Amy Adams and Chris Cooper, as well as the sequel, Muppets Most Wanted (2014), this time starring Ricky Gervais and Tiny Fey. Stoller’s second writer/director/producer project was The Five-Year Engagement (2012), again co-written with Segel starring Blunt and Rhys Ifans.

Nicholas Stoller’s second solo directing project was the remarkably successful Neighbors (2014), starring Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, grossing nearly $271 million on an $18 million budget, and marking the third-highest gross in the U.S. for a non-sequel, R-rated comedy. It spawned a sequel, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016), also starring Rogen and Efron, with Rose Byrne and Chloe Grace Moretz, and grossing $108 million globally.

Between these were the releases of two movies co-written by Stoller, Sex Tape (2014) with Segel, and the Ben Stiller sequel, Zoolander 2 (2016), on which Stoller shares writing credit with Stiller, Justin Theroux, and John Hamburg. Nicholas Stoller co-directed (with Dog Sweetland) Warner’s animated feature, Storks (2016), which Stoller had sole writing credit and produced with Brad Lewis; it featured the voices of Andy Samberg, Jennifer Aniston, Jordan Peele, and Keegan-Michael Key.

Stoller continued his animation run, this time as sole writer, on DreamWorks Animation’s Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017), while sharing writing credit (with Kevin Hart, John Hamburg, and three other writers) on Hart’s comedy, Night School (2018), with Tiffany Haddish. Stoller took executive producer credits on two additional animation features, Smallfoot (2018) and DC League of Super-Pets (2022), while between these two projects had a writer-only project (co-written with Matthew Robinson and Tom Wheeler), Paramount’s Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019).

Nicholas Stoller’s fourth film as writer/producer/director is Bros (2022), billed as the first studio-produced (Universal Pictures) comedy featuring a gay male relationship; Stoller co-wrote the script with co-star Billy Eichner and shared producing chores with Judd Apatow and Joshua Church. In one of his more unusual projects, Stoller adapted George Orwell’s political fable, Animal Farm (date to be announced), for the screen, with actor Andy Serkis directing.

Stoller was director/writer/producer of the Amazon MGM Studios wedding comedy, You’re Cordially Invited (date to be announced), starring and also produced by Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell, and released by Amazon.