Biography
After getting his start in show business in production management, Jon Landau served as a producer and studio executive on a number of blockbuster movies before partnering with James Cameron to make two of the biggest hits in cinema history - "Titanic" (1997) and "Avatar" (2009). Landau earned his first producing credit on the teen comedy "Campus Man" (1987), followed by co-producing "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" (1989) and Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy" (1990) before serving as executive vice president of feature productions at 20th Century Fox. During his over five-year tenure at Fox, Landau supervised production on many films, including "Die Hard 2" (1990), John Hughes' "Home Alone" (1990) and its sequel "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" (1992), "The Last of the Mohicans" (1992), "Mrs. Doubtfire" (1993), "Waiting to Exhale" (1995) and "Broken Arrow" (1996). It was at Fox that he began his professional relationship with Cameron on "True Lies" (1994), which blossomed into a partnership when Landau returned to the producing ranks on Cameron's blockbuster "Titanic" (1997), a mammoth hit that earned over $1 billion worldwide and 11 Academy Awards, but had been a troubling production of epic proportions. After producing "Solaris" (2002) together, the team of Landau and Cameron brought forth "Avatar" (2009), a revolutionary epic that made a record $2 billion internationally while igniting a 3-D craze with Cameron's pioneering techniques. Because of his two massive successes with Cameron, Landau stood tall as one of Hollywood's premiere producers. The highly-anticipated sequel to "Avatar," "Avatar: The Way of the Water" was released in 2022. The production budget, said to be well over $350 million, brought in over $2.3 billion at the box office. "Avatar 3" is scheduled to be released in December of 2025. Jon Landau died on July 5, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA at the age of 63.
