Gil Kenan
Kenan in 2024
Born	(1976-10-16)October 16, 1976 (age 48)[1] London, England
Education	University of California, Los Angeles (MFA)
Occupations	Film director screenwriter producer
Years active	2002–present
Spouse	Eliza Chaikin ​ (m. 2005)​ [1]

Gil Kenan (born October 16, 1976)^[1] is a British–American filmmaker. He is best known for directingMonster House (2006), which earned him anAcademy Award nomination forBest Animated Feature. He has also collaborated with directorJason Reitman in co-writing theGhostbusters filmsAfterlife (2021) andFrozen Empire (2024), the latter he also directed, as well asSaturday Night (2024).

Kenan was born in London to a Jewish family.^[2][3] When Kenan was three, his familyimmigrated toTel Aviv, Israel.^[2][3] He has one brother.^[4] At age eight, Kenan and his family once again moved toReseda, Los Angeles.^[1]

Kenan studied at thefilm division of theUniversity of California, Los Angeles where he received aMaster of Fine Arts degree in animation in 2002.^[5][6] For his graduate thesis, he created a 10-minutestop-motion/live-actionshort film,The Lark.^[5][7]

The first public screening ofThe Lark caught the attention of Jordan Bealmear, who was an assistant atCreative Artists Agency.^[8] The agency sent hundreds of copies of Kenan's short in order to interest parties in the film industry and after a few months of interviews,^[8]Robert Zemeckis offered Kenan the director's chair for his first feature,Monster House (2006).^[8] Executive produced by Zemeckis andSteven Spielberg,^[8] it was nominated for anAcademy Award forBest Animated Feature, losing toHappy Feet.^[9]

Kenan followedMonster House withCity of Ember, a post-apocalyptic science fiction adventure film based onJeanne Duprau's 2003novel of the same name.^[10] Produced byTom Hanks,^[10] it was released in October 2008 to mixed reviews and poor box office results.^[11][12] Kenan's next film,Poltergeist, a remake of the 1982Tobe Hooperfilm of the same name, was released in May 2015. In July of that same year, Kenan signed on to direct and co-write afilm adaptation of the popular video game seriesFive Nights at Freddy's byScott Cawthon,^[13] but later withdrew from the project. Kenan also co-wrote and directed the Christmas fantasy filmA Boy Called Christmas, and was released onNetflix in 2021. In 2019, Kenan co-wrote a script along withJason Reitman forGhostbusters: Afterlife, which is a direct sequel toGhostbusters andGhostbusters II, was released in 2021.^[14] After the film's success, he and Reitman signed an overall deal withSony Pictures Entertainment to develop more projects.^[15] He was later chosen to direct the 2024 filmGhostbusters: Frozen Empire, a sequel toGhostbusters: Afterlife, replacing Reitman, who instead became a producer and was a co-writer of the film with Kenan.^[16][17]

Kenan has citedDavid Lynch,Richard Elfman,Lotte Reiniger,Zbigniew Rybczyński, andAlfred Hitchcock as influences; he once met with Elfman. Among his favorite movies and short films, Kenan has listedEraserhead,Forbidden Zone andTango, as all three influenced Kenan's shortThe Lark. He first became aware of a director's own style while watchingTerry Gilliam'sTime Bandits and appreciated Gilliam's point of view as well as that ofSteven Spielberg in his 1980s films, leading him to respect a film's craft and storytelling.^[4]

In 2005, Kenan married Eliza Chaikin, who was an art director onCity of Ember.^[1][6]

Short film

Feature film

Television

• Gil Kenan atIMDb
• Interview

• 1976 births
• 20th-century American Jews
• 21st-century American Jews
• Film producers from Los Angeles
• American horror film directors
• American male screenwriters
• British emigrants to Israel
• British emigrants to the United States
• British Jews
• Film directors from London
• Film directors from Los Angeles
• Israeli Jews
• Jewish American screenwriters
• Jewish film people
• Living people
• People from Reseda, Los Angeles
• UCLA Film School alumni

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