Todd Phillips

Todd Phillips (birthname: Todd Phillip Bunzl) is a director/writer/producer of largely broad comedies—including the smash hit The Hangover franchise, which made him rich—who shifted to extremely dark takes on the D.C. Comics Universe with his acclaimed 2019 and 2024 Joker movies starring Oscar-winning Joaquin Phoenix. Phillips was still a student filmmaker at New York University when he was director/writer/producer of the punk rock documentary profile, Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies (1993), which was one of the few student-made films to receive a commercial release—and yet Phillips still had to drop out of NYU film school because he couldn’t afford tuition.

Phillips was co-director/writer/producer of his second documentary in a row, Frat House (1998), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury prize for best documentary, but was canceled for broadcast by HBO when Phillips and the filmmakers were accused of staging events. Phillips was director/co-writer of his first narrative feature, the raunchy sex comedy Road Trip (2000), starring Tom Green, Breckin Meyer, Seann William Scott, Amy Smart, and Fred Ward and grossing a strong $120 million against $16 million costs for DreamWorks Pictures.

Todd Phillips was director/writer/producer of the documentary Bittersweet Motel (2000), chronicling the summer-fall 1997 tour of the band Phish, and then for the first time Phillips was director/co-writer/producer of the frathouse-themed raunch comedy Old School (2003), starring Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn and grossing an excellent $87 million return on a $24 million budget for DreamWorks. Phillips continued in comedy mode as a director/co-writer of Dimension Films/Warner Bros.’ big-screen adaptation of the hit TV series, Starsky & Hutch (2004) starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson and with Vaughn, Juliette Lewis, and Snoop Dogg, marking another hit for Phillips with $170 million box office.

Phillips was a story writer (and an uncredited director) on the hit comedy, Borat (2006), brought to life by star/co-writer/producer Sacha Baron Cohen (with whom Phillips had a falling-out and left production after creative differences), directed by Larry Charles and delivering big profits (over $262 million on $18 million costs) for 20^th Century Fox. Phillips was at the same time director/producer/co-writer (with regular co-writer Scot Armstrong) of the loose remake of the 1960 British comedy School for Scoundrels (2006) starring Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Heder, Luis Guzman, Horatio Sanz, Sarah Silverman and Michael Clarke Duncan, marking Phillips’ rare box-office misfire ($24 million gross against $35 million costs) and released by The Weinstein Company/MGM/Dimension Films.

Todd Phillips had a spectacular commercial success as director/producer (with fellow producer Dan Goldberg) of the smash hit comedy, The Hangover (2009), co-starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis, and whose $469 million return for Warner Bros. prompted the studio to back two sequels for which Phillips was director/co-writer/producer with the trio of Cooper, Helms, and Galifianakis: the Bangkok-set The Hangover Part II (2011) (grossing a great $587 million) and The Hangover Part III (2013) (delivering a robust $362 million, for a cumulative total near $1.5 million. Phillips reunited with co-star Galifianakis between Hangover projects as director/co-writer/producer of the commercially successful road trip movie Due Date (2010), starring Robert Downey Jr., Michelle Monaghan, Juliette Lewis, and Jamie Foxx, grossing a potent $212 million (on $65 million costs) for Warner Bros.

Phillips shifted into even more black-comic tones as director/co-writer/producer of Warner Bros.’ arms dealer-themed crime comedy War Dogs (2016), co-starring Jonah Hill and Miles Teller, with Ana de Armas and Bradley Cooper (who also produced), earning a weak $86 million and mixed reviews. Phillips soon recovered from this mild disappointment with his biggest commercial and artistic success as director/writer/producer of a radical re-envisioning of the Batman World nemesis, Joker (2019), starring a flamboyant (and Oscar-winning) Joaquin Phoenix, with Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz and Frances Conroy, premiering at the Venice Film Festival (where it won the Golden Lion), nabbing two Oscars (from 11 nominations including three for Phillips) and grossing an astounding $1 billion-plus for Warner Bros./Village Roadshow Pictures/DC Films, which triggered Warners to back the sequel Joker: Folie à Deux (2024), with Phillips again directing, co-writing (with Scott Silver) and producing (with Emma Tillinger Koskoff and Joseph Garner) and co-starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga (as Harley Quinn), with Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener and Beetz.

Todd Phillips was also producer only on director/writer/producer Steven Zaillian’s adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 epic novel All the King’s Men (2006); the Nima Nourizadeh-directed found-footage teen comedy Project X (2012); and the Bradley Cooper-directed and co-starring A Star is Born (2018), starring Lady Gaga.