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Brad Alan Grey (born December 29, 1957) is an American film, television producer, and former talent manager currently working as the CEO of Paramount Pictures.
Grey was born in the Bronx, the youngest child of a garment district salesman. He majored in business and communications at the State University of New York at Buffalo. While attending the university, he became a gofer for a young Harvey Weinstein who was then a concert promoter. Grey would also travel to Manhattan on weekends to look for young comics at the Improv. Grey brought comedian Bob Saget to New York thus making Saget his first client.
Grey's career soon took off in 1984 when he met talent manager Bernie Brillstein in San Francisco, California at a television convention. Having convinced Brillstein that he could deliver fresh talent, he was taken on as a partner and the Bernie Brillstein Company was re-christened Brillstein-Grey Entertainment. Grey began producing for television in 1986 with the Showtime hit, It's Garry Shandling's Show. With his success, he went on to produce the HBO series The Larry Sanders Show. He also produced the ABC nightly talk show Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher.
Grey also ventured into film by producing the Adam Sandler hit, Happy Gilmore. He continued to produce successful television with several high profile and successful shows developed in the 1990’s: NewsRadio and Just Shoot Me for NBC, Mr. Show for HBO, and The Steve Harvey Show for the WB all fell under the Brillstein-Grey banner. He also helped shepherd the critically acclaimed HBO drama, The Sopranos. Grey earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama in 1999 for his producing efforts. His feature projects, however, failed to match the success of his television ventures: Bulletproof (1996), The Replacement Killers (1998), Screwed (2000) and What Planet Are You From? (2000) were typical film projects. Only The Wedding Singer (1998) and Scary Movie (2000) proved to be financially successful.
In 1996, Brillstein sold his shares of the company to Grey, giving Grey full rein over operations; the company's television unit was subsequently rechristened "Brad Grey Television". In 2002, Grey formed Plan B with Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, with a first-look deal at Warner Bros. After Pitt and Aniston separated, Grey and Pitt moved the company to Paramount Pictures, where Grey had become CEO after Sherry Lansing left.
While Grey's new CEO duties forced him to divest himself from both Brillstein-Grey and Plan B, it is unclear to what extent he maintains former personal management ties to non-entertainment entities, most notably Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani. Recent DreamWorks releases have included Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima and Dreamgirls. Holdover releases from Lansing and Dolgen's regime before Grey took over constitute most of the rest of Paramount's major releases, including War of the Worlds, Mission: Impossible III and Charlotte's Web.
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Grey"
Categories: Articles lacking sources from July 2006 | All articles lacking sources | American film producers | American television producers | Emmy Award winners | Talent agents | 1958 births | Living people
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