The Austin Film Society will honor Jonathan Majors, Michael De Luca and Janet and John Pierson at the 21st annual Texas Film Awards, taking place March 3 at Willie Nelson's Luck Ranch, located outside of Austin, Tex.Majors ("The Last Black Man in San Francisco," "Da 5 Bloods") will receive the Rising Star Award, while De Luca, the co-chair and CEO of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, will be honored for his impact on global cinema. The Piersons, the "first couple" of...
Warner Bros. Pictures
Michael
De
Luca
Chairman & CEO, Film Group
As expected, De Luca jumped from his film chief job at MGM in the wake of its sale to Amazon, landing at Warner Bros. in July 2022. It was a homecoming of sorts for the onetime bad boy exec, who made his bones as president of production at Warner Bros. subsidiary New Line Cinema in the 1990s — at the tender age of 27 — greenlighting projects such as “Boogie Nights” and the “Austin Powers” movies. He and fellow ex-MGM’er Pamela Abdy now head up motion pictures for the Burbank-based studio, replacing Toby Emmerich, who had taken over De Luca’s position when he departed New Line in 2001. The month following their arrival, De Luca and Adby cut a multiyear deal giving Warner Bros. international distribution rights to MGM’s feature slate, starting with Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” released in November.