Chris Weitz

CHRIS WEITZ

Date of Birth: 1969

Born in New York, Chris and fellow screenwriter/brother Paul share a hollywood ancestry, including a grandfather agent, Paul Kohner, an Oscar-nominated actress mother, Susan Kohner, and fashion designer father, John Weitz.

Chris crossed the pond for his education, receiving his Bachelors and Masters degrees in English Literature at Cambridge College. He remained in England following school and worked as a journalist for several newspapers, including The Sunday Times and The Independent.

His interest drifted from journalism to diplomatic corps, which required him to take a number of foreign service exams. While waiting for the green light by the State Department (which took a year), Chris passed the time by working on screenplays with his brother.

Their first full length feature attempt was Antz (1998). The computer animated story about the rebellion of one ant made a good showing at the box office, but struggled against the Disney release A Bug's Life, which came out only weeks after Antz. Chris and his brother got back to work on their next two scripts Clockstoppers (1999), and the sequel to Eddie Murphy's Nutty Professor, The Klumps (2000).

For the start of the new millennium, Chris decided to take on a different challenge, this time behind the camera as director of Down to Earth. He directed and wrote About a Boy (2002), starring Hugh Grant, which was a hit both with the critics and commercially, and received his first Oscar nomination for the screenplay.

His next film, The Golden Compass, didn't fare as well, either with critics or at the box office, but since then was chosen to direct The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009), a sequel to the mega-hit, Twilight. New Moon made film history by breaking box office records on its opening weekend.