Charles Roven
Credits: OPPENHEIMER, THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY
An Academy Award® and Golden Globe® winning producer and leader in the entertainment industry for over four decades, CHARLES ROVEN is a founder of Atlas Entertainment. Throughout his illustrious career, Roven has built a reputation for creative collaboration and has garnered acclaim for his work in film, television and music. As a producer, founder and board member of a number of major entertainment companies, Roven has helped generate billions of dollars in revenue. At the global theatrical box office alone, his films have grossed over $10.6 Billion to date, making him number seven among the top ten grossing producers of all time.
Most recently, Roven produced alongside Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan, OPPENHEIMER, written and directed by Christopher Nolan. OPPENHEIMER, winner of seven Academy Awards® including Best Picture, stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, and Florence Pugh, and is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The universally acclaimed film became a global commercial success breaking numerous box office records and generating nearly $1 Billion in the global box office. OPPENHEIMER won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama, the BAFTA Award for Best Film, was recognized as one of AFI’s Movies of the Year, and garnered numerous awards from the major guilds including PGA, DGA and SAG.
Prior to OPPENHEIMER, Roven produced Sony Pictures’ UNCHARTED, based on Sony PlayStation’s most successful game, directed by Ruben Fleischer, and starring Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, and Antonio Banderas. That film opened at #1 its first two weekends and has grossed over $407 million in worldwide box office.
Currently, Roven is in post-production on John Woo’s THE KILLER, a reimagining of the director’s 1989 film of the same name, for Universal Pictures and in production on the Amazon MGM Studios film MERCY starring Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis and Annabelle Wallis that will be released in theaters worldwide on August 15, 2025.
Roven has produced many of the DC Expanded Universe films distributed by Warner Bros. including THE SUICIDE SQUAD, written and directed by James Gunn, starring Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, Joel Kinnaman, John Cena, and Viola Davis, WONDER WOMAN 1984, directed by Patty Jenkins, and starring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, and Pedro Pascal, WONDER WOMAN, directed by Patty Jenkins, which broke numerous box office records and was among the PGA’s best picture nominations, David Ayer’s SUICIDE SQUAD and Zack Snyder’s MAN OF STEEL, BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, JUSTICE LEAGUE and Zack Snyder’s JUSTICE LEAGUE.
Roven also produced J.C. Chandor’s TRIPLE FRONTIER starring Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund and Pedro Pascal, which was released by Netflix in March 2019 and watched by more than 63M accounts and over 120M people in the first four months. It is still consistently one of Netflix’s most watched Original Films.
Having previously produced David O. Russell’s THREE KINGS, Roven collaborated with the filmmaker for a second time on the award-winning AMERICAN HUSTLE. The film received seven Golden Globe® nominations, winning three, including “Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical” and took home three BAFTA awards. The celebrated box office hit was also nominated for 10 Academy Awards® including a Best Picture nomination for Roven.
Roven produced Christopher Nolan’s worldwide cinematic phenomena THE DARK KNIGHT Trilogy (BATMAN BEGINS,THE DARK KNIGHT and HE DARK KNIGHT RISES) as well as critically-acclaimed films such as THE BANK JOB and the timeless romantic classic CITY OF ANGELS. Additionally, Roven produced GET SMART and the 1995 Oscar® nominated film TWELVE MONKEYS, which was later adapted into an Atlas-executive produced television series of the same name.
Roven has also produced branded entertainment box office favorites including SCOOBY-DOO, SCOOBY-DOO 2: MONSTERS UNLEASHED. He serves as Executive Producer on the animated Scooby- Doo feature SCOOB, starring Zac Efron and Amanda Seyfried, which Warner Bros. released digitally on May 15, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For television, Roven executive produced the Atlas Entertainment scripted anthology series “Dirty John”, based on the popular true crime podcast of the same name. The show’s first season, which featured an all-star cast led by Connie Britton, Eric Bana, Juno Temple and Julia Garner became the most-watched scripted series ever among total viewers for Bravo and was nominated for Golden Globe ® and Critics’ Choice Awards. The series’ second season, entitled “Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story”, starring Amanda Peet and Christian Slater, premiered June 2, 2020 on USA. Roven also served as an Executive Producer on “What / If”, the social suspense thriller series created by Mike Kelley and starring Renee Zellweger and Jane Levy, which premiered on Netflix in May 2019.
Yet, Roven’s success in entertainment goes well beyond producing. In 1990, Roven and Robert Cavallo co-founded Roven/Cavallo Entertainment (RCE), the predecessor to Atlas Entertainment, which in addition to producing films, guided the trajectories of some of the largest names in music. Clients included multi-Grammy® winning recording artists Green Day, Alanis Morissette, Seal, Goo Goo Dolls, Weezer, Savage Garden, LeAnn Rimes, All American Rejects and Paula Abdul. RCE fostered Morissette throughout her early career, including the release of her album Jagged Little Pill, which remains one of the best-selling albums of all time by a female artist.
In 1993, the legendary Dawn Steel, Roven’s wife, joined the venture and RCE’s production banner was re-named Atlas Entertainment and its music management affiliate became Atlas/Third Rail Management. In 1998, Roven took the sole reins of Atlas Entertainment after Steel’s passing and a nine-year partnership with Cavallo during which the company produced the $200 million grossing film CITY OF ANGELS. Atlas/Third Rail simultaneously packaged the film’s soundtrack which won three Grammy® Awards, yielded #1 singles for Atlas/Third Rail artists Alanis Morissette and the Goo Goo Dolls, and made the soundtrack the largest selling album of the year while earning ten platinum records.
Roven went on to merge the Atlas Entertainment entities with talent management group The Gold/Miller Company, forming Mosaic Media Group (MMG). The company’s talent management clients included prolific comedians and actors Ellen DeGeneres, Vince Vaughn, Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell, the Wayans family, Sacha Baron Cohen as well as formidable directors Jay Roach, Judd Apatow and Adam McKay. This merger came from the common desire of the principals to be part of a true multimedia company with the ability to package projects, fully exploit opportunities for their clients through a multi-platformed approach and acquire entertainment related media assets. These assets included a legendary catalogue of music properties, notably the entire ZZ Top catalogue, songs by rock pioneers Aerosmith and other chart-toppers from the country and rock-and-roll genres. With a cutting-edge philosophy around multimedia, MMG was an early strategic partner of MP3.COM (an early online music platform), which became one of the first internet media companies with a successful IPO.
Roven alongside MMG president Allen Shapiro oversaw the acquisition of Dick Clark Productions (DCP), whose celebrated programming includes the Golden Globe® Awards, the American Music Awards, the Academy of Country Music Awards and the annual Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Roven served on the board that packaged the first original hit series for DCP in over a decade: the game-changing reality competition show, “So You Think You Can Dance”, which wrapped its 17th season in 2022. In 2007, Roven served as chairman of the negotiating committee which sold DCP to Red Zone Capital Fund, the investment team chaired by Daniel Snyder, the owner of the then Washington Redskins.
In 2008, after tremendous success and accomplishing the goals they set almost a decade before, the partners of MMG took back their individual organizations in an effort to focus on their specific passions.
Roven’s decision to streamline his focus on film and content was recognized with the ShoWest Producer of the Year Award as well as Filmmaker of the Year at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2008.
Looking to capitalize on the synergistic relationship music has with motion pictures, Atlas Entertainment teamed with Atlantic Records in 2016 to deliver a companion soundtrack to the company’s $746 million worldwide box office blockbuster SUICIDE SQUAD. The soundtrack debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and was the only soundtrack certified Platinum that year. Suicide Squad: The Album was nominated for five Grammy® awards and has been streamed over 3 billion times worldwide.
In 2018, Roven’s legacy in Hollywood was cemented when he received the prestigious David O. Selznick Achievement Award from the PGA for his outstanding body of work in motion pictures.