Justin Baldoni

Justin Baldoni (birthname: Justin Louis Baldoni) has had an unusual career as a producer, director, actor, TED talk presenter, podcast creator, and author, appearing in feature films as an actor since 2005 in minor features such as Yesterday’s Dream (2005) and The Helix…Loaded (2005), as well as his first studio-backed movie, The House Bunny (2008), starring Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, and Emma Stone under Fred Wolf’s direction, and released by Sony Pictures Releasing to a strong $70 million return. Baldoni then appeared as an actor in a string of little-seen features, including Alpha Males Experiment (2009), Unrequited (2010), Minkow (2011), Isolated (2013), Not Today (2013), and A Fine Step (2014).

Baldoni made his feature debut as director/producer of the drama, Five Feet Apart (2019), starring Haley Lu Richardson, Cole Sprouse, Moises Arias, Parminder Nagra, and Claire Forlani, and proved to be an outstanding commercial release for CBS Films with a $92.6 million global gross (against $7 million costs).

Baldoni’s second film as director/producer was the streaming movie (for Disney +), Clouds (2020), with Fin Argus, Sabrina Carpenter, Lil Rel Howery, and Neve Campbell, and then Baldoni had a voice role in the DNEG Animation/Columbia Pictures/Alcon Entertainment-produced The Garfield Movie (2024), with Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Washington, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong, Harvey Guillen, Bowen Yang, and Snoop Dogg, and grossing $245.6 million on a $60 million budget.

Justin Baldoni joined the cast of director/producer/actor Tony Goldwyn’s comedy-drama, Ezra (2024), co-starring Bobby Cannavale, William Fitzgerald, Robert De Niro, Rose Byrne, Vera Farmiga, Whoopi Goldberg, and Rainn Wilson, and premiering at the Toronto Film Festival before a $3.2 million release by distributor Bleeker Street. Baldoni was director and co-star of the high-profile Colleen Hoover adaptation, It Ends With Us (2024), starring Blake Lively, Jenny Slate, Hasan Minhaj, and Brandon Sklenar, produced via Columbia Pictures and released by Sony Pictures Releasing.

Baldoni next was the director/producer of the documentary, Laughing at My Nightmare (date to be announced), featuring the main subject, actor Shane Burcaw, and produced through Baldoni’s company, Wayfarer Entertainment. Baldoni has been producer or executive producer (only) of several fiction and non-fiction features, including AniMen: Triton Force (2010), the Danny Trejo-starring Smile or Hug (2022), Love You Anyway (2022), The Moon & Back (2022), The Hurricanes (2023), The Senior (2023), the Will Ferrell-starring documentary Will & Harper (2024), Empire Waist (2024), medical comedy Code 3 (date to be announced), the Scarlett Johansson-directed Eleanor the Great (date to be announced), and the Yemi Bamiro-directed documentary Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story (date to be announced).