Justin Simien

Justin Simien is a rising, talented filmmaker who has jumped from indie filmmaking into the big-budget arena of Disney movies. From 2006 to 2015, Simien worked in the short film and music video formats and was director/writer/editor on three short films, a producer on another, an editor only on two other shorts, a director only on one, and an actor in another.

Simien made a smashing feature debut as director/writer/producer of Dear White People (2014), an acclaimed satire co-starring Tyler James Williams, Tessa Thompson, Kyle Gallner, Teyonah, and Dennis Haysbert, winning a special jury award for breakthrough talent in Sundance’s American Dramatic Feature competition, and ultimately spawning a 40-episode 2017-to-2021 Netflix series, for which Simien was a creator, director, writer and executive producer.

Simien opted for streaming (via Hulu) for his second feature, the satirical horror movie, Bad Hair (2020), with Elle Lorraine, Jay Pharoah, Vanessa Williams, Blair Underwood, Lena Waithe, Laverne Cox, and Usher, which premiered at the Sundance film festival. Unlike his previous features, Simien’s third was his first studio project and one not written or produced by him—Disney’s second movie adaptation of Haunted Mansion (2023), starring LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jared Leto, and budgeted at $157.8 million.