Marc Forster

Marc Forster (birthname: Marc Forster) is a much-in-demand director of a range of studio-produced entertainments, after starting as a bold independent filmmaker. Though German-born and identifies as a Swiss citizen, Forster’s movies are thoroughly imbedded in a Hollywood framework. His career didn’t start that way: His debut was the ultra-low-budget indie, Loungers (1995), a discovery of the Slamdance Film Festival and winner of its Best Feature prize.

Forster also wrote and directed his sophomore feature, Everything Put Together (2000), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and co-starred Radha Mitchell, Megan Mullally, Louis Ferreira, and Mark Boone Junior. Forster’s breakout film was his first as director-only, the highly effective Monster’s Ball (2001), with star Halle Berry winning the Oscar for Best Actress (a first for a Black female actor) and playing opposite Billy Bob Thornton, Heath Ledger, Sean Combs, Peter Boyle, and Yaslin Bey (formerly Mos Def).

The movie, made for $4 million, grossed nearly $45 million worldwide. Marc Forster continued his Oscar success (albeit without a Best Director nomination) for his fourth feature, the biopic about Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie, Finding Neverland (2004), starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Radha Mitchell, and Dustin Hoffman, and scoring seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Actor (for Depp), and Screenplay (for David Magee). Despite his high artistic ambitions and fine cast with the drama, Stay (2005), co-starring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, and Ryan Gosling, Forster faced his first box-office disaster, with the $50 million production earning only $8.5 million globally.

Marc Forster enjoyed more success a year later as a director with the well-reviewed, $54 million-grossing Stranger than Fiction (2006), starring Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah, and Emma Thompson. The busy Forster’s next assignment was a very different one, adapting a massive worldwide best-seller set in Afghanistan: The Kite Runner (2007), based on Khaled Hosseini’s beloved novel and starring Khalid Abdalla, Zekeria Ebrahimi, and Homayoun Ershadi.

Forster’s fourth movie in four years marked his jump into the James Bond movie empire with Quantum of Solace (2008), the second Bond foray for Daniel Craig, with Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Almaric, Giancarlo Giannini, Jeffrey Wright, and Judi Dench. Though receiving indifferent reviews, this Bond took in $589 million globally, for a box-office ranking of #4 among all Bond movies. Marc Forster’s biggest disappointing release during this period (as director and producer) was the Sudan-based drama, Machine Gun Preacher (2011), with Gerard Butler, Michelle Monaghan, and Michael Shannon, receiving poor reviews and paltry box-office returns of only $3 million globally, on a $30 million-plus budget.

Joining forces with producer-star Brad Pitt, Forster had one of his biggest hits with the zombie spectacular, World War Z (2013), with Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, and Matthew Fox, and finishing up as the biggest grossing zombie to date with a global return of $540 million. Forster’s first feature that he wrote or co-wrote (in this case, with Sean Conway) in sixteen years was the psychological drama, All I See Is You (2016), with Blake Lively, Jason Clarke, Yvonne Strahovski, and Danny Huston, premiering at the Toronto Film Festival, but was the $30 million film was a box-office disaster, grossing only $678,000 worldwide.

Marc Forster’s roller-coaster commercial record took another upturn with Christopher Robin (2018), his second directorial biopic about a children’s book author—in this case, Winnie the Pooh author A. A. Milne (portrayed by star Ewan McGregor), with Hayley Atwell, Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett—and becoming Disney’s highest-grossing Pooh movie at $197 million. Forster stayed in the children’s storytelling mode with his next feature as director with the sequel to the hit Wonder (2017), White Bird: A Wonder Story (originally set for theatrical release in 2022, but delayed to a date to be announced), starring Ariella Glaser, Bryce Gheisar, Orlando Schwerdt, Gillian Anderson, and Helen Mirren.

Marc Forster’s interest in adapting beloved books and authors continued with his next directorial assignment, A Man Called Otto (2022), starring Tom Hanks (also serving as producer with actor-wife Rita Wilson), Rachel Keller, Mariana Trevino, and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and the second film version of Fredrik Backman’s mega-bestseller, A Man Called Ove. Forster had three subsequent projects as director-producer: Untitled Greenpeace Project (date to be announced), written by Jonathan Glatzer; the World War II-set The Cow (date to be announced), starring Ewan McGregor; and a new Thomas & Friends film, The Adventures of Thomas (date to be announced), the first in the franchise set for theatrical release since Thomas and The Magic Railroad (2000).