Gil Kenan

Gil Kenan is a director/writer/producer who has specialized in horror and fantasy movies—sometimes blending both—beginning with Kenan’s feature debut as director on the animated horror-comedy, Monster House (2006), starring the voices of Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kevin James, Jason Lee, Catherine O’Hara, Kathleen Turner, and Fred Willard, and grossing a healthy $142 million (on a $75 million budget) for Sony/Columbia Pictures and earning an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.

Kenan’s second feature as director only was also his first live-action movie, City of Ember (2008), adapted from Jeanne DuPrau’s novel, with Saoirse Ronan, Harry Treadaway, Mary Kay Place, Bill Murray, Martin Landau, Toby Jones, and Tim Robbins, but which lost money for 20^th Century Fox with a poor $18 million gross against $55 million costs. Kenan’s third feature in a row as director only was the remake of Poltergeist (2015), starring Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jane Adams, and Jared Harris, and grossing a good $95.4 million worldwide for 20^th Century Fox.

Kenan had a busy 2021, first as screenwriter and executive producer on Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the fourth movie in the Ghostbusters franchise, with Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard, McKenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Annie Potts, and Ernie Hudson, and earning a robust $204 million globally for Columbia/Sony Pictures; and then with Kenan’s first movie as director-writer, A Boy Called Christmas, starring Henry Lawful, Toby Jones, Sally Hawkins, Kristen Wiig, Maggie Smith, and Jim Broadbent, and released theatrically in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, and China, and streaming on Netflix in the U.S.

Gil Kenan returned to the Ghostbusters franchise as writer-director-executive producer this time for Columbia/Sony Pictures’ Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024), with new cast members Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswalt. Kenan was co-writer (with director Jason Reitman) and producer of SNL 1975 (date to be announced), a recount of the premier year of NBC’s long-running comedy show, Saturday Night Live (1975-present), co-starring Dylan O’Brien, Rachel Sennott, Lamorne Morris, Ella Hunt, Kim Matula, Gabriel LaBelle, Cory Michael Smith, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, and Cooper Hoffman, via Sony Pictures Releasing.