Ted Hope is an American independent film producer based in New York City. He is known for being Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society and as of 2019, serves as Co-Head of Movies for Amazon Studios.
Hope has produced the first films of such notable filmmakers as Ang Lee, Hal Hartley, Nicole Holofcener, Todd Field, Michel Gondry, Moises Kaufman, and Shari Springer Berman, and Robert Pulcini. In the early 1990s, Hope co-founded with James Schamus the production/sales company Good Machine, which he and his partners sold to Universal in 2002. That same year he co-founded This is That with his current partner Anne Carey, Good Machine’s Head of Business Affairs Diana Victor, and his former assistant, Anthony Bregman.
Hope was instrumental in organizing the successful 2003 anti-trust campaign against the MPAA and its ban on screeners. Although the MPAA head, Jack Valenti, claimed The Screen Ban was about combating “piracy”, it was recognized by the court as stifling competition, particularly that of independent filmmakers against Hollywood.
The Hollywood Reporter cited Hope and his partners at This is That among the twenty-five most powerful people in the Independent Film business.1 In 2013, IndieWire named Hope to its inaugural list of Influencers, a list “dedicated to 40 of the people and companies who have captured our attention as we watch them try to figure out what the independent film industry is today and, more importantly, what it will become.”2
On January 8, 2014, Hope was named CEO of Fandor, a curated online service for independent and international films. He left Fandor at beginning of 2015 to become the head of production for Amazon Original Movies.
Anonymous on March 10, 2020