ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
STEVEN SPIELBERG (Director) is a three-time Academy Award winner, having earned two Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture for "Schindler's List" and a third Oscar for Best Director for "Saving Private Ryan."  He has also received Best Director Oscar nominations for "Munich," "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial," "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
In 1994, Spielberg's internationally lauded "Schindler's List" emerged as the year's most honoured film, receiving a total of seven Oscars, including the aforementioned nods for Best Picture and Best Director.  The film also collected Best Picture awards from many of the major critics' organizations, in addition to seven BAFTA Awards, including two for Spielberg.  He also won the Golden Globe Award and received a Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award.
Spielberg's critically acclaimed World War II drama "Saving Private Ryan" starring Tom Hanks, was the highest-grossing release (domestically) of 1998.  The film also won five Oscars, including the one for Spielberg as Best Director, two Golden Globe Awards for Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director, and numerous critics' groups awards for Best Picture and Best Director.  In addition, Spielberg won a DGA Award and a Producers Guild of America (PGA) Award.  That year, the PGA also presented Spielberg with the prestigious Milestone Award for his historic contribution to the motion picture industry.
Spielberg won his first DGA Award for "The Color Purple" and also earned DGA Award nominations for "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Empire of the Sun," "Jaws," "Amistad" and "Munich."  With 10 in all, Spielberg has received more DGA Award nominations than any director in history and, in 2000, he received the DGA's Lifetime Achievement Award.  He is also the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Kennedy Center Honor.
For television, on the heels of "Saving Private Ryan," Spielberg and Tom Hanks executive-produced the miniseries "Band of Brothers" for HBO and DreamWorks Television.  Based on the book of the same name by the late Stephen Ambrose, the fact-based World War II project won both Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for Best Miniseries.  Spielberg and Hanks are currently in development on "The Pacific," a World War II miniseries focusing on the battles in the Pacific theatre.
Spielberg won another Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries for "Steven Spielberg Presents Taken," a SciFi Channel drama about alien abduction, which he executive produced.  He is currently developing another miniseries to air on the SciFi Channel called "Nine Lives."  Also for television, Spielberg executive-produced "Into the West," an original limited series Western which aired on the TNT cable network.  Amblin Entertainment produced, with Warner Bros. Television, the award-winning, groundbreaking series "E.R.," which begins its fifteenth season on NBC this fall.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Spielberg was raised in the suburbs of Haddonfield, New Jersey and Scottsdale, Arizona.  He started making amateur films while still in his teens, later studying film at California State University, Long Beach.  In 1969, his 22-minute short "Amblin'" was shown at the Atlanta Film Festival, which led to a deal with Universal, making him the youngest director ever to be signed to a long-term deal with a major Hollywood studio. 
Four years later, he directed the suspenseful telefilm "Duel," which garnered both critical and audience attention.  He made his feature film directorial debut on "The Sugarland Express" from a screenplay he co-wrote.  In addition to the aforementioned films, his earlier film credits as a director include "Always" and "Hook."
In 2006, Spielberg produced, with Clint Eastwood and Rob Lorenz, "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima," the latter of which earned four Oscar® nominations, including Best Picture.  The dual films, directed by Eastwood, explored the battle of Iwo Jima from American and Japanese perspectives.
In 2005, Spielberg directed two films: "War of the Worlds" starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning, and "Munich" starring Eric Bana, Daniel Craig and Geoffrey Rush, which earned five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director for Spielberg.  Spielberg's other recent films include "Catch Me If You Can" starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, the futuristic thriller "Minority Report" starring Cruise, and "The Terminal" starring Hanks.  He also wrote, directed and produced "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence," which was realized from the vision of the late Stanley Kubrick.  In 2000, Spielberg won the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film, presented by BAFTA - Los Angeles.
In 1984, Spielberg formed his own production company, Amblin Entertainment.  Under the Amblin banner, he has served as a producer or executive producer on more than a dozen films, including such successes as "Gremlins," "The Goonies," "Back to the Future" and its two sequels, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," "An American Tail," "The Land Before Time," "The Flintstones," "Casper," "Twister," "The Mask of Zorro," "Men in Black" and "Men in Black II."   
In October 1994, Spielberg partnered with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to form the new studio DreamWorks SKG, which was sold to Paramount Pictures in early 2006.  Under their leadership, the studio has enjoyed critical and commercial success, and has been responsible for some of the most honored films in recent years, including three consecutive Best Picture Academy Award® winners: "American Beauty," "Gladiator" and "A Beautiful Mind" (the latter two co-productions with Universal), and the recent blockbuster "TRANSFORMERS."   Spielberg has also devoted his time and resources to many philanthropic causes.  The impact of his experience making "Schindler's List" led him to establish the Righteous Persons Foundation using all his profits from the film.  He also founded Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (now the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education), which has recorded more than 50,000 Holocaust survivor testimonies.
In addition, Spielberg executive produced "The Last Days," the Shoah Foundation's third documentary, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.  He is also the Chairman Emeritus of the Starbright Foundation, which combines the efforts of pediatric health care, technology and entertainment to empower seriously ill children.

DAVID KOEPP (Screenplay by) has written and directed the films "Secret Window," "Stir of Echoes," "The Trigger Effect," "Suspicious" and the upcoming DreamWorks comedy "Ghost Town."  He wrote or co-wrote "War of the Worlds," "Zathura," "Spider-Man," "Panic Room," "Snake Eyes," "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," "Mission: Impossible," "The Paper," "Jurassic Park," "Carlito's Way," "Death Becomes Her," "Bad Influence" and "Apartment Zero."
Koepp was born in Wisconsin and went to film school at UCLA.  He lives in New York City.

GEORGE LUCAS's (Story by/Based on Characters by/Executive Producer) devotion to timeless storytelling and cutting-edge innovation has resulted in some of the most successful and beloved films of all time. 
Lucas's film career started in 1971.  With San Francisco-based American Zoetrope and long-time friend Francis Ford Coppola as executive producer, Lucas transformed an award-winning student film into his first feature, "THX 1138."
Lucas's second feature film, the low-budget "American Graffiti" (1973), became the most successful film of its time and garnered the Golden Globe®, the New York Film Critics' and National Society of Film Critics' Awards.  Pushing the boundaries of storytelling, "American Graffiti" was the first film of its kind to tell multiple stories through interweaving narratives backed by a soundtrack of contemporary music.
It was Lucas's third film, 1977's "Star Wars," that changed everything -- breaking box office records, setting new standards for sophistication in film visuals and sound and garnering eight Academy Awards.  The success of "Star Wars" allowed Lucas to remain independent and continue operating in Marin County, CA.  Lucas has been the story writer and executive producer of a series of other box office blockbusters, beginning with the continuation of the "Star Wars" Saga: "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) and "Return of the Jedi" (1983).  In 1981, he created the classic adventurer Indiana Jones, and co-wrote and executive-produced the successful series consisting of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" (1984) and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989), a trilogy that won eight Academy Awards.
Lucas has also served as executive producer on such widely varied films as "Willow," based on his original story and directed by Ron Howard; and "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" directed by Francis Ford Coppola.  Each received three Academy Award® nominations.  As executive producer, Lucas's films also include Akira Kurosawa's "Kagemusha" (1980); "Mishima" (1985); "Latino" (1985); "Howard the Duck" (1986); "Labyrinth" (1986); and "Radioland Murders" (1994).
In the early 1990s, his passion for both history and educating young people drove the creation of "The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones" and its rich combination of exciting episodes and companion documentaries.  During its original television run in the 1990s, the series was critically acclaimed and won 12 Emmy Awards and 26 Emmy nominations.
Lucas returned to directing in 1999 with the first of three new episodes of the "Star Wars" Saga: "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace," the year's biggest box office hit, which was also the first major live-action film to be projected digitally.  Three years later, "Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" broke new ground as the first major movie shot using entirely digital media.  In 2005, "Star Wars: Episode III --Revenge of the Sith," the final movie in the epic saga, was the top-grossing film worldwide.
Lucas is currently supervising the creation of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," which premieres as an all-new feature film on August 15, followed by the television series debut in the fall. "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" takes audiences on incredible new "Star Wars" adventures, combining Lucasfilm's traditions of storytelling and quality with a signature animation style.
Lucas has also taken a leadership role in applying his technical and storytelling expertise to the classroom, engaging students through interactive multimedia environments.  He is chairman of the board of the George Lucas Educational Foundation and also serves on the board of the Film Foundation and is a member of the USC School of Cinematic Arts Advisory Board.

JEFF NATHANSON (Story by) has two previous collaborations with Steven Spielberg, "The Terminal" and "Catch Me If You Can," for which he earned a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.  In 2007, his production company, Invisible Ink Entertainment, signed a first-look deal at DreamWorks SKG.
His other recent film credits include "Rush Hour 3," "The Last Shot," which he also directed, and "Rush Hour 2." He is currently writing the biopic "Milli Vanilli" for producer Kathleen Kennedy.
Nathanson graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles before entering the American Film Institute's screenwriting program in 1989.  He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

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