John Fogelman
| John Fogelman | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1965 Los Angeles, CA |
| Residence | Los Angeles, CA |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Southern California, University of California, Los Angeles |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
| Employer | CEO, FactoryMade Ventures |
| Website | factorymade |
John Michael Fogelman (born c. 1965) is an American entrepreneur. He is the CEO of FactoryMade Ventures, an entertainment and media incubator. Formerly Executive Vice President and Head of the Motion Picture Department and the Intellectual Property Group at the William Morris Agency (WMA), Fogelman was a principal architect of the merger between William Morris and Endeavor Talent Agency, and served as a founding board member and an agent after the companies merged in 2009. He left William Morris Endeavor in 2011 to found FactoryMade.
Fogelman was born and grew up in Los Angeles. In high school, he worked for his uncle, Louis Fogelman, a co-founder of the retail music chain Wherehouse Entertainment and the founder of Music Plus. Fogelman attended Tulane University and the University of Southern California and graduated with a BS in Accounting. He subsequently earned a CPA in California. He graduated from the UCLA Anderson School of Management with an MBA in 1992. While at UCLA, he and his colleagues created the Disc Lift, a CD-ROM device. After the patent was awarded, Fogelman built IAF Enterprises, a company which provided the infrastructure to market and support the device.
Fogelman—who also worked as an auditor at KPMG Peat Marwick—began his agency career at Triad Artists Agency shortly before the company was bought by William Morris. In 1994, after training in WMA's storied mailroom program, he was promoted to a position as a talent agent. Fogelman was named Head of the Motion Picture Talent Department in 2000, and in 2003 was appointed to the WMA Board of Directors. In 2004 he became the Executive Vice President and Head of the Motion Picture Department. Fogelman played a significant role in the 2009 merger of WMA and Endeavor, and was a founding board member for the newly-formed company, William Morris Endeavor, where he continued to oversee the Strategic Planning and Development Group.
As an agent, Fogelman represented J.J. Abrams, Michael Bay, Courteney Cox Arquette, Whoopi Goldberg, Kevin Spacey, Salma Hayek and Eric Bana as well as corporate clients including Hasbro and HSN. As one of the first film executives to capitalize on the market for toy-driven feature films, Fogelman helped establish the concept of "toyetic" in movie making. Described as a film which can lend itself to a toy and sell tickets and merchandise, Fogelman was noted for his toyetic work with Hasbro by the Wall Street Journal, who referred to him as “Mr. Potato Head’s agent.” Fogelman’s projects for Hasbro included the packaging and development of the GI Joe series, and Battleship movies, as well as the Transformers films, which generated more than $380 million in revenue for Hasbro's Transformer products in the year following its release. Fogelman's group also created and brokered several Hasbro films for Universal Pictures. Additionally, with Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner, he advised and negotiated the formation of a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery Communications, and engineered the rebranding of Discovery Kids as The Hub as well as the launch of its website, which featured content built around some of Hasbro's brands. He also helped to build the framework for J.J. Adams' Bad Robot Productions, Michael Bay's Bay Films and Platinum Dunes.
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