Gil Kenan


Gil Kenan is a British-American-Israeli filmmaker and animator.

Life and career

Kenan was born in London, to a Jewish family. When Kenan was three, his family immigrated to Tel Aviv, Israel. At age eight, Kenan and his family once again moved to Reseda, Los Angeles.
Kenan studied at the film division of the University of California, Los Angeles where he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in animation in 2002. For his graduate thesis, he created a 10-minute stop-motion/live-action short film titled The Lark.
The first public screening of The Lark caught the attention of Jordan Bealmear, who was an assistant at Creative Artists Agency. The agency sent hundreds of copies of Kenan's short in order to interest parties in the film industry and after a few months of interviews, Robert Zemeckis offered Kenan the director's chair for his first feature, Monster House. Executive produced by Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, but lost to Happy Feet.
Kenan followed Monster House with City of Ember, a post-apocalyptic science fiction adventure film based on Jeanne Duprau's 2003 novel of the same name. Produced by Tom Hanks, it was released in October 2008 to mixed reviews and poor box office results. Kenan's next film, Poltergeist, a remake of the 1982 Tobe Hooper film of the same name, was released in May 2015. In July of that same year, Kenan signed on to direct and co-write a film adaptation of the popular video game series Five Nights at Freddy's by Scott Cawthon, but later withdrew from the project. In January 2019, it was announced that Kenan will co-write a script along with Jason Reitman for , which is scheduled for release in 2021.

Personal life

In 2005, Kenan married Eliza Chaikin, who was an art director on City of Ember.

Filmography

Special thanks