Douglas Eric Liman is an American film director and producer. He is known for directing the films Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Jumper, Edge of Tomorrow, and American Made.
Liman's first major success was Swingers, released in 1996. The film, written by Jon Favreau, is a comedy about struggling actors amid the L.A. club milieu, based on Favreau's life. Liman raised the funding and it was made on the cheap, starring Favreau and his friends, ultimately costing $250,000. The film was a critical success, and jump-started the careers of Liman and the featured actors. Liman sold the film to Miramax for $5.5 million. Liman next directed Go, which tracks the events of a drug deal gone wrong through three different points of view as plot lines diverged and reconverged; Liman was also the film's cinematographer. The film was an indie hit and made a profit at the box office grossing $28.4 million worldwide against a $6.5 million budget. In 1999, Liman shot a commercial for Nike in which Tiger Woods, without letting the ball touch the ground, repeatedly bounced a ball on his club and then drove it into the distance. , May 2010 Liman next directed the 2002 action thriller The Bourne Identity starring Matt Damon, an adaptation of the 1980 Robert LudlumnovelThe Bourne Identity was a box office success, earning over $200 million, and began a Bournefilm franchise that has since included four additional films. Liman did not direct any Bourne films after the first one, but served as an executive producer for three of the four subsequent films. Liman executive produced and directed the first two episodes of the successful Fox prime time drama The O.C.. Liman produced and directed a series of comedy shorts for the Chrysler Film Project and Cannes Film Festival entitled Indie Is Great. Liman also directed Mr. & Mrs. Smith, a comedic thriller about an increasingly distant married couple, both secretly assassins, who are hired to kill each other. The film, his most commercially successful to date, is also well known for the off-screen romance that developed between stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie after making the film. In 2005, Liman signed on to direct the pilot episode of NBC's television series Heist, which is about a season-long attempt to rob three jewelry stores on Beverly Hills' swanky Rodeo Drive. His film adaptation of Steven Gould's science fiction novelJumper was released in 2008. In 2009, he co-founded the website 30ninjas.com which is geared towards fans of action movies and television, gaming, extreme sports and viral videos. He also maintains a blog on the site. He directed 2010's Fair Game, about the Plame affair, which competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. In 2011, Liman directed and produced I Just Want My Pants Back, a television series that aired on MTV. He produces Covert Affairs and Suits, two original series on the USA Network. He directed the film adaptation of the Hiroshi Sakurazaka novel, All You Need is Kill, released as Edge of Tomorrow, starring Tom Cruise. In 2017, he directed Aaron Taylor-Johnson and John Cena in the military thriller The Wall, and directed Cruise again, in the crime-action film American Made, a biopic of pilot Barry Seal. In August 2016, Liman signed on to direct Dark Universe, a film set within the DC Extended Universe and based on superhero teamJustice League Dark after leaving the adaptation of Gambit. However, Liman has departed from the project due to schedule conflicts with the film Chaos Walking, that Liman was working on that time. Most of his career has been associated with the production company Hypnotic. He is co-owner with Dave Bartis, whom he met as an undergraduate at Brown University where they co-founded BTV and NACB. Liman is on the advisory board of the Legal Action Center and the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law. In January 2020, Liman reported that the Edge of Tomorrow sequel, Live Die Repeat and Repeat, was currently in its early planning stages. In May 2020, it was reported that Liman would be directing, writing, and producing the first ever movie shot in Outer space. Tom Cruise is set to star and produce, with Elon Musk and NASA involved with the project as well.
