Meet the Team

Steven Spielberg (Director/Producer) is one of the world's most successful and influential filmmakers, and is currently chairman of Amblin Entertainment, a corporate descendent of DreamWorks, SKG, which he co-founded in 1994.

Among a host of career accolades, he is a three-time Academy Award winner, a Kennedy Center Honoree, a recipient of the Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 from President Barack Obama.

Spielberg is the top-grossing director of all time, having helmed such blockbusters as Jaws, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones franchise and Jurassic Park. He took home his first two Oscars—Best Director and Best Picture—for the internationally lauded Schindler’s List, which received a total of seven Oscars. The film was also named the Best Picture of 1993 by many of the major critics’ organizations, in addition to winning seven BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globe Awards, both including Best Picture and Director. Spielberg also won the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for his work on the film.

Spielberg won his third Academy Award—Best Director—for the World War II drama Saving Private Ryan, which was the highest-grossing release (domestically) of 1998. It was also one of the year’s most honored films, earning four additional Oscars, as well as two Golden Globe Awards, for Best Picture— Drama and Best Director, and numerous critics’ groups awards in the same categories. Spielberg also won another DGA Award and shared a Producers Guild of America (PGA) Award with the film’s other producers. That same year, the PGA also presented Spielberg with the prestigious Milestone Award for his historic contribution to the motion picture industry.

He has also earned Academy Award nominations for Best Director for The Fabelmans, West Side Story, Lincoln, Munich, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Additionally, he earned DGA Award nominations for those films, as well as Amistad, Empire of the Sun, The Color Purple and Jaws. With thirteen to date, Spielberg has been honored by his peers with more DGA Award nominations than any other director. In 2000, he received the DGA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also the recipient of the Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Hollywood Foreign Press’s Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Kennedy Center Honor and numerous other career tributes.

In 2012, Spielberg directed Lincoln, based in part on author Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. The film garnered 12 Academy Award nominations, winning two Oscars, for Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of the iconic 16th President and for Best Production Design.

Spielberg’s 2015 dramatic thriller Bridge of Spies, starring Tom Hanks, received six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, with Mark Rylance winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. That same year, he was also an executive producer on Jurassic World, which earned over $1.6 billion worldwide. Directed by Colin Trevorrow and starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, it was the fourth film in the Jurassic series. A follow-up to the blockbuster, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, directed by J.A. Bayona, was released in 2018, with a sixth film, Jurassic World Dominion, released in 2022.

Spielberg directed and produced the 2017 drama The Post, starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. The film earned two Academy Award nominations, one for Best Picture, as well as Meryl Streep’s 21st nod for Best Actress. He also directed the 2018 film Ready Player One, based the science fiction novel by Ernest Cline, which became an instant blockbuster and would go on to earn over $580m worldwide.

He directed the 2021 reimagining of West Side Story, which earned seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture.

Most recently, Spielberg directed The Fabelmans, a semi-autobiographical film that he co-wrote with his long-time collaborator Tony Kushner, which earned seven Academy Award nominations including Best Director and Best Picture.

Spielberg’s career began with the 1968 short film, Amblin', which led to him becoming the youngest director ever signed to a long-term studio deal. He directed episodes of such TV shows as Night Gallery, Marcus Welby, M.D., and Columbo, and gained special attention for his 1971 telefilm, Duel. Three years later, he made his feature film directorial debut on The Sugarland Express, from a screenplay he co-wrote. His next film was Jaws, which was the first film to break the $100 million mark at the box office.

In 1984, Spielberg formed his own production company, Amblin Entertainment. Under the Amblin Entertainment banner, he served as producer or executive producer on such hits as Gremlins, The Goonies, the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, An American Tail, Twister, the Zorro duology and the Men in Black films.

Ten years later, Spielberg partnered with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to form the original DreamWorks Studios. The studio enjoyed both critical and commercial successes, including three consecutive Best Picture Academy Award winners: American Beauty, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind. In its history, DreamWorks also produced or co-produced a wide range of features, including the Transformers blockbusters; Clint Eastwood’s World War II dramas Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, the latter earning a Best Picture Oscar nomination; Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers and The Ring, to name only a few. Under the DreamWorks banner, Spielberg also directed such films as War of the Worlds, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can and A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

Spielberg founded Amblin Entertainment in 2015 with investment partners Reliance Entertainment, Entertainment One, Alibaba Pictures, Participant Media and Universal Pictures. The company’s recent theatrical releases include 1917, which won three Academy Awards and grossed $385m at the global box office, and Green Book, which won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and grossed more than $320m worldwide.

Spielberg has not limited his success to the big screen. He was an executive producer on the long-running Emmy-winning NBC TV drama E.R. On the heels of their experience on Saving Private Ryan, he and Tom Hanks teamed to executive produce the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, based on Stephen Ambrose’s book about a U.S. Army unit in Europe in World War II.

Among its many awards, the project won both Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for Outstanding Miniseries. He and Hanks then reunited to executive produce the acclaimed 2010 HBO miniseries The Pacific, this time focusing on the Marines in WWII’s Pacific theatre. The Pacific won eight Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Miniseries. A third series, Masters of the Air, is currently in post-production for Apple TV+.

Among the shows Spielberg also executive produced were the Emmy-winning Syfy Channel miniseries Taken, the TNT miniseries Into the West, the Showtime series The United States of Tara, NBC’s Smash, TNT’s Falling Skies, as well as CBS’ Under the Dome and Extant. He was also an executive producer on the HBO Films’ movie All the Way, starring Emmy winner Bryan Cranston, and the Netflix docuseries Five Came Back. Amblin Television was a producer of FX’s The Americans, which earned four Emmy wins, including two wins for Margo Martindale for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series. The series also won Peabody Awards in 2015 and 2019, and was a perennial recipient of the AFI Award for TV Program of the Year.

Spielberg has devoted much of his time and resources to many philanthropic causes.  He formed The Righteous Persons Foundation by using all his profits from the release of Schindler’s List, and soon thereafter founded the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which in 2006 became the USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education. The Institute has recorded more than 55,000 video testimonies with survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides, and is dedicated to making the testimonies a compelling voice for education and action.

In 2021, Spielberg and Kate Capshaw formally launched The Hearthland Foundation, a philanthropic fund to help build a more just, equitable, and connected America. Inspired by the words of the poet Langston Hughes, “O, let America be America again—The land that never has been yet—And yet must be,” Hearthland is founded on the belief that creating a better shared future for our country calls for relationships that cross divides and the moral imagination for what is possible. To that end, the foundation has three overlapping areas of focus: building a shared democracy; telling an honest and generative narrative about this country; and fostering a culture of accompaniment.

Jeff Small is the Chief Executive Officer of Amblin Entertainment, a film and television company led by Steven Spielberg.  Jeff is responsible for all operations of the company, while collaborating closely with Spielberg on Amblin’s vision, creative slate, and corporate strategy.  Jeff first joined Amblin’s predecessor company DreamWorks Studios as President and Chief Operating Officer in 2006, a role in which he served until being elevated to co-CEO in 2015 and later CEO in 2019.

Prior to arriving at DreamWorks, Jeff spent six years at Revolution Studios, serving as Chief Financial Officer, and eventually Chief Operating Officer. Prior to joining Revolution, he spent several years with Universal Pictures after beginning his career in the Walt Disney Company Motion Picture Group.

Jeff’s charitable endeavors include serving on the Board of Directors of The Weingart Center, a comprehensive human services center for unhoused men and women living in Los Angeles, and the Starlight Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the emotional and social well-being of hospitalized children by delivering happiness and promoting play. Jeff has also served on multiple committees benefitting the USC Shoah Foundation and the USC Keck School of Medicine.

Jeff is a 1995 graduate of Stanford University and enjoys continued involvement with the University through several advisory and leadership committees.  He is a native of Marietta, Georgia, and resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Sara, and two daughters.

Kristie Macosko Krieger is an Academy Award, Emmy Award, PGA Award and BAFTA Award-nominated producer whose working relationship with director Steven Spielberg spans over 20 years. She recently produced Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, an upcoming film centering on the complicated love story of Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre. Maestro received seven Academy Award nominations at the 2024 Oscars, including Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture, for which she received her fifth Oscar nomination.

Krieger also produced the Spielberg-directed film The Fabelmans, which earned seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture.

She produced the 2021 Academy Award-nominated film West Side Story, executive produced The Trial of the Chicago 7, which was written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, and executive produced Oslo, which stars Andrew Scott and Ruth Williams. Previously, Krieger produced the Spielberg-directed films Ready Player One, based on the best-selling book by Ernest Cline, and The Post, a drama inspired by The Washington Post’s first female publisher, Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep), and its driven editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks). Krieger also served as executive producer of The BFG and produced the Academy Award-nominated film Bridge of Spies. Additional producing credits include Lincoln, War Horse, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Krieger serves on the Executive Committee of AMPAS’ Producers Branch, the PGA’s National Board of Directors, the Peabody Awards’ Board of Directors – West Coast, and as a member of the Board of Directors of Amblin Entertainment.

Krieger began her career with the USC Shoah Foundation, where she served as head of worldwide publicity. She joined the staff of DreamWorks Studios in 1997. She currently serves as part of the senior leadership team at Amblin Entertainment where she is involved with all aspects of Spielberg’s productions and helps guide the strategic direction of the company. Krieger, a graduate of UC Davis, resides in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

Chris Leotis is chief operating officer of Amblin Entertainment, a content creation company led by Steven Spielberg.

Leotis joined  Amblin Entertainment as CFO, from the LA Clippers where she had served as CFO. Prior to the Clippers, she held senior financial management positions at Otter Media, Concord Music and Fox Networks Group. She began her career in Dallas, Texas, at Bain & Company, followed by a position at Goldman Sachs. She then moved to Los Angeles and became a member of the acquisitions team at Colony Capital.

Leotis is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

She holds an MBA degree from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and BA degrees in business administration and economics from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

As President of Production for Amblin Entertainment, the storied company co-founded by Steven Spielberg in 1981, Holly Bario oversees the studio’s film releases, working closely with the legendary filmmaker. Since joining Amblin in 2008, the company has released some of the most celebrated and popular films of all time. In the last decade alone, its films have been nominated for 56 Academy Awards^®, winning nine.

Among Bario’s most recent films are Carry-On, starring Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman, which broke Netflix viewership records in its debut and currently sits among the platforms most-watched films ever, and The Thursday Murder Club, adapted from Richard Osman’s bestseller, starring Academy Award winner Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan. Other films she has overseen include Best Picture nominee The Help, starring Octavia Spencer and Emma Stone, as well as audience favorites including The Girl on the Train, starring Emily Blunt; The Hundred-Foot Journey, starring Helen Mirren; The House with a Clock in its Walls, starring Jack Black and Cate Blanchett; A Dog’s Purpose and its follow-up A Dog’s Journey; and the HBO film Oslo, for which she was nominated for an Emmy. Bario’s upcoming film slate includes Gremlins 3, continuing the beloved franchise. The film is directed by Best Picture nominee Chris Columbus, who penned the 1984 original, and is slated for a November 2027 release by Warner Bros.

 

Prior to joining DreamWorks, Bario was a production executive at Universal Pictures for over a decade, rising through the ranks to EVP of Production. She was responsible for shepherding some of Universal’s most successful comedies, including Bruce Almighty, Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Baby Mama, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Kicking and Screaming, and Mamma Mia! She also oversaw both the first and second installments of the record-setting action series The Fast and the Furious, as well as the Daniel Craig-led Cowboys & Aliens. Bario began her career with Universal Pictures in 1996, working for four-time Oscar-nominated producer Marc Platt.

 

Bario has been featured multiple times in both the Variety 500 list and The Hollywood Reporter’s 100 Most Powerful Women in Entertainment. She is a graduate of Emerson College and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Darryl Frank is a multi Emmy-winning producer and executive who serves as President of Amblin Television, where he has worked for over 30 years. Alongside Justin Falvey, he oversees all development, production, and programming for the company, serving as Executive Producer on all Amblin Television projects.

 

Frank’s upcoming series include Cape Fear, adapted from Martin Scorsese’s hit thriller, starring Amy Adams and Javier Bardem, for Apple TV, and All the Sinners Bleed, Joe Robert Cole’s adaptation of S.A. Cosby’s bestseller, for Netflix, in partnership with the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions.

Frank has executive produced numerous acclaimed and commercially successful projects. These include the Emmy, Golden Globe, Peabody, Critics Choice, PGA, and five time AFI Award winner The Americans, as well as Emmy winners The Haunting of Bly Manor, Smash, The United States of Tara, The Borgias, and others. He has co-executive produced limited series including Masters of the Air, Apple TV’s biggest series launch ever; 16-time Emmy nominee Into the West; and Taken, for which he won a Prime Time Emmy for Best Limited Series. In the long-form space, Frank’s credits also include executive producing the HBO film All the Way, starring Bryan Cranston and nominated for eight Emmys.

 

Alongside Falvey, Frank also created and runs Amblin Documentaries. The division’s films and series include Jaws @ 50 for Nat Geo/Disney+, Emmy winners Good Night Oppy, Five Came Back, Why We Hate, Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul, and Laurel Canyon, as well as the Grammy-nominated Music by John Williams and Emmy nominee Life on Our Planet among others. Amblin has had several documentaries appear in Netflix’s top ten, in addition to successes on Disney+, HBO, Paramount+, Apple TV, Hulu, and MGM+. Among the division’s upcoming projects is The Dinosaurs, narrated by Morgan Freeman, for Netflix.

Justin Falvey is an Emmy-winning executive who serves as President of Amblin Television, where he has worked for nearly 30 years. Alongside Darryl Frank, he oversees all development, production, and programming for the company, serving as Executive Producer on all Amblin Television projects.

 

Falvey’s upcoming series include Cape Fear, adapted from Martin Scorsese’s hit thriller, starring Amy Adams and Javier Bardem, for Apple TV, and All the Sinners Bleed, Joe Robert Cole’s adaptation of S.A. Cosby’s bestseller, for Netflix, in partnership with the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions. 

Falvey has executive produced numerous acclaimed and commercially successful projects. These include the Emmy, Golden Globe, Peabody, Critics Choice, PGA, and AFI Award winner The Americans, as well as Emmy winners The Haunting of Bly Manor, Smash, The United States of Tara, The Borgias, and others. He has co-executive produced limited series including Masters of the Air, Apple TV’s biggest series launch ever; and 16-time Emmy nominee Into the West. In the long-form space, Falvey’s credits include executive producing the HBO film All the Way, starring Bryan Cranston and nominated for eight Emmys.

 

Alongside Frank, Falvey also created and runs Amblin Documentaries. The division’s films and series include Emmy winners Good Night Oppy, Five Came Back, Why We Hate, and Laurel Canyon, as well as the Grammy-nominated Music by John Williams and multiple seasons of Emmy nominee Life on Our Planet. Amblin has had several documentaries appear in Netflix’s top ten, in addition to successes on Disney+, HBO, Paramount+, Apple TV, Hulu, and MGM+. Among the division’s upcoming projects is The Dinosaurs, narrated by Morgan Freeman, for Netflix.

Mark Graziano is the Executive Vice President of Post Production at Amblin Entertainment. He’s been with the Amblin Family since June 2002.

In addition to post, Mark oversees music as well as restorations of classic Spielberg films.

Graziano started in the mailroom at New Line Cinema in the 1990s, working his way up to Post Coordinator (Dumb & Dumber, The Mask, SE7EN), then Post Production Supervisor. His first supervisory role was on Boogie Nights for Paul Thomas Anderson, where he forged a rapport with the filmmaker. That led to supervising Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love before fate intervened and brought him to DreamWorks.

Graziano joined DreamWorks Studios as a staff Post Supervisor in the spring of 2002. Over the next four years, he supervised eight films (Old School, Anchorman) before being tapped to head the Post Production department in 2006. He has worked on 55 features as the head of post, including The Fabelmans, West Side Story, Ready Player One, Lincoln, Dreamgirls, Tropic Thunder, Transformers 1 & 2, Paranormal Activity, The Help, 1917, Real Steel, and Sweeny Todd to name a few.

Graziano is the industry co-chair for Exceptional Minds, a successful non-profit professional training academy and studio for students and professionals on the autism spectrum.

Additionally, he gives his time as a guest lecturer and mentor for the next generation of filmmakers coming out of his alma mater, The University of Texas.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, independent film Writer/Producer/Director, Brenna Graziano, and their two sons, Rex and Nash.

Graziano is also a die-hard fan of the Melvins.

Michelle Brattson is executive vice president of physical production at Amblin Entertainment since 2022, where she oversees early prep on the film development slate, through to prep and production of the films, including most recently Carry-On and The Thursday Murder Club. Michelle was a director of production for Netflix Original Studio Films from 2017-2022 where she managed productions including Hustle, Murder Mystery, Murder Mystery 2, Marriage Story, White Noise, and Hillbilly Elegy. Prior to Netflix, Michelle was senior vice president of physical production at Amblin Entertainment.

Before her in-house studio career Michelle spent fifteen years freelancing in production management on major studio films including Interstellar, Star Trek Into Darkness, Neighbors, Angels & Demons, Frost/Nixon, Charlie Wilson's War, and Lucky You. Michelle began her career in film development as an assistant and creative executive at New Regency.

Michelle is a member of the Producer’s Guild of America and a Women in Film mentor. Michelle holds a Masters in Producing from the USC School of Cinematic Arts’ Peter Stark Program and a BA in English from Dartmouth College. She is originally from New York, and resides in Los Angeles with her husband, son and dog.

 

Chris Floyd is of counsel for Amblin Entertainment, the film and television company chaired by Steven Spielberg.

Floyd was a key member of the team that helped launch Amblin Entertainment in December 2015 from the former DreamWorks Studios. At Amblin Entertainment, he oversees international distribution, business and legal affairs, corporate legal, human resources, merchandising and ancillary licensing, and various other operations of the company.

During his tenure at DreamWorks Studios, Floyd served as general counsel and head of business affairs, having joined the company in 2007.

Prior to DreamWorks, Floyd was senior vice president of business affairs at Universal Pictures where he negotiated individual talent agreements, producer term deals and co-financing arrangements for the motion picture group. He also handled business affairs activities for the studio’s on-lot producers, including Tom Hanks and Imagine Entertainment.

Before joining Universal, Floyd was senior vice president of business affairs for Paramount Pictures and led the business affairs team acquiring films for Paramount Classics, the studio’s arthouse label.

Floyd began his law career as an entertainment litigation associate at Hill Wynne Troop & Meisinger, where he represented major entertainment corporations including Twentieth Century Fox and Sony Pictures. In 1993, he joined the feature legal affairs department of Walt Disney Motion Pictures before moving into business affairs in 1995.

Floyd is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

He is a graduate of Northwestern University and Georgetown University Law Center.