Brad Grey, Former Paramount Chief, Dies at 59

[aggie49]

Brad Grey, the former chief of Paramount, died on Sunday from cancer at his Holmby Hills home with his family by his side. He was 59.

Grey stepped down as chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures earlier this year after leading the studio for 12 years. He came to Paramount from Brillstein-Grey Management, the talent agency he co-founded with the late Bernie Brillstein in 1984.

While Grey left a mixed legacy behind at Paramount — during his tenure the studio relied on such franchises as the Transformers movies, Star Trek films, and Mission: Impossible series and also saw the Al Gore climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth win an Oscar — as a manager, he left an even more indelible mark on the culture, playing a role in bringing such iconic TV series as The Larry Sanders Show, The Sopranos, and Real Time with Bill Maher to cable TV.

As executive producer of The Sopranos, he shared in two best drama series Emmys, and he also won four Peabody Awards.

Before taking on the Paramount job, Grey formed the Plan B production company with Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, which began with a first-look deal at Warner Bros., where it produced Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Martin Scorsese's The Departed. When Pitt and Aniston's marriage ended, she left the partnership, and in 2005 Grey and Pitt moved the company to Paramount, which served as the company's home base until last month, when the studio signed a new deal with Megan Ellison's Annapurna.

Grey also brought Scorsese into his Paramount circle with an overall deal that resulted in such films as Shutter Island, Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, and last year's Silence.

Grey was pushed out of Paramount soon after Bob Bakish came on as the new CEO at Viacom to replace Philippe Dauman. In March, Jim Gianopulos, the former head of 20th Century Fox's movie studio, was hired to step in for Grey.

[elvisdo]

Wow, and so young as well.