Jared Stern

Jared Stern began his Hollywood career as a screenwriter, debuting with the Jim Carrey family comedy, Mr. Popper’s Penguin (2011). Stern’s taste for comedy continued with his 2012 script for director Shawn Levy’s sci-fi-inflected The Watch, starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Jonah Hill. Stern reunited with Levy and Vaughn for the corporate comedy, The Internship (2013), with Owen Wilson.

Though hired by creators Phil Lord and Christopher Miller to write The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, Stern instead wrote two other 2017 features in the Lego franchise: The acclaimed The Lego Batman Movie, with the voices of Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, and Ralph Fiennes; and The Lego Ninjago Movie, with the voices of Dave Franco and Michael Pena.

That same year, Stern became a producer for the first time on writer-director-star Michelle Morgan’s feature debut, It Happened in L.A., which premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Stern expanded his resume as director and writer of the Netflix rom-com, Happy Anniversary (2018), with Noel Wells and Ben Schwartz.

Stern continued a partnership with Warner Bros. that began with the animated feature, Storks (2016), which he executive produced, as he did with the Warners animated Smallfoot (2018). The success of this pair of movies led to Warners signing Stern, through his company A Stern Talking To, to produce the animated, Toto: The Dog-Gone Amazing Story of the Wizard of Oz (2022).

Stern continued the animal theme as writer-producer-director of the animated DC League of Super-Pets (2022), with the voices of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. Stern is attached to produce Warners’ planned eighth installment in the Police Academy franchise.